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posted by janrinok on Tuesday May 01 2018, @02:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-you-see-me,-now-you-don't dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Google will slowly be rolling out a number of changes for consumer Gmail users and G Suite users. Some of the changes improve usability and productivity, while others are meant to maximize data and user protection. Some of the new security options should help enterprise users meed GDPR compliance needs.

[...] Gmail confidential mode will allow users to:

  • Set expiration dates for emails or revoke previously sent messages
  • Secure access to the contents of emails by requiring recipients to enter a password
  • Restrict the recipients’ ability to forward, copy, download or print emails.

These things will be possible because these emails will not be actually downloaded in the recipients’ inbox, but will be placed on a separate page/window where their content can be viewed, and the email will show that page.

Guess I'll be switching to ProtonMail for my webmail needs, which, granted, are few.

Source: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/04/26/gmail-self-destructing-emails/


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:21PM (9 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:21PM (#674165)

    My optimistic rose colored glasses interpretation is based on my use of email like a TO DO list and emails (aka to do items) that self destruct when they're no longer useful mean less delete key hitting, which is pretty lame, but emails been around for decades so any attempt to improve is going to be pretty lame little details, so thats appropriate.

    In practice, yeah, its going to be annoying and dumb, mostly. Spam for sales that end next Sunday night will have their expiration date set to the year 3000, of course... which might be an interesting auto-deletion flag... hmm.

    My wife uses her email like an infinite long historical archive which mostly to me looks cluttered and she likely does not "get" the concept of wanting a password reset email to expunge itself eventually... she'd ask "what if in 2073 I need to know the exact date and time I reset my password as a login security question?"

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:51PM (8 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 01 2018, @03:51PM (#674176)

    My wife uses her email like an infinite long historical archive

    We're the opposite, my wife gets 10x as much e-mail as I do, but keeps her inbox clean and permanently deletes most e-mail. I presently have 2204 unread messages in Gmail that I bypassed due to uninteresting subject line (I do mass "mark as read" on those every few years), and a 7.9 GB archive going back more than 10 years. If I "had that in an e-mail, somewhere" I can usually find it in my Gmail.

    Corporate makes our IT auto-destruct email after 2 years, I'm not actively fighting the policy, but it does occasionally cost the company time/money when I can't find something that would have been valuable if I could have just searched my old messages.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 01 2018, @04:25PM (5 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 01 2018, @04:25PM (#674192)

      I presently have 2204 unread messages in Gmail

      Oooh... that would make me super anxious as a "to do" email operator, perhaps there's 2203 emails that don't matter and one "you seem to have forgotten your electric bill is due today" email and I'd be pretty nervous I'd miss that similar rare important email. I have zero emails in my inbox at this instant and I find it very relaxing, not quite an alcohol buzz but pretty cheerful.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 01 2018, @04:29PM (4 children)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 01 2018, @04:29PM (#674194)

        I was so chill and buzzed I didn't even close my quote tag, huh... F I just got an email from Digikey they're now selling 750 watt RF transistors for 900 MHz ISM apps (or ham apps for me, I guess), clicked thru, damn $315.89 each, I'll get back to you boys on that later, hit delete, ahh, back to inbox-zero chill again

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 01 2018, @05:28PM (2 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 01 2018, @05:28PM (#674216)

          I generally remember some kind of "seen it before" subject line, and then scan forward from there, opening anything interesting along the way. It used to be that I would scan forward from the last e-mail I opened and if none were interesting I'd open the newest one just to mark it read, but Gmail started this Unread/Important/Everything Else sorting that, sort of, seems to make my un-filtered inbox a little quicker to deal with, if harder to explain the algorithm.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 01 2018, @05:52PM (1 child)

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 01 2018, @05:52PM (#674228)

            Well... thats a valid and workable algorithm. But there's a difference between a workable algorithm, and inbox-zero levels of chill that are so chill I don't need legalized marijuana, I just need an empty inbox. Beyond it merely working, is it fun?

            With a side dish of I hate seeing a "todo" item sit in there uncontrollably for a long time. On long term average they may be equally enjoyable, although the std-deviation of fun for inbox-zero is almost certainly much higher.

            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 01 2018, @07:28PM

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 01 2018, @07:28PM (#674276)

              My work inbox is currently at 29 unread, and I know that 29 were not really important - just something I thought I might want to circle back to someday.

              Then, there are 8 pinned (a MS Office thing), they are usually about future events that I'm too lazy to try to fit into a calendar item. Then there's the calendar - which I was much happier with Google's calendar when I used that at my last company, but they got bought by a big fish and me along with them, so now I use Office 365.

              The inbox itself is never "emptied" - I just let them roll out automatically at the end of the 2 year period, and bitch loudly when I'm asked about something that I had in an e-mail 26 months ago.

              I find it liberating to be able to accept a non-zero inbox count. A few new ones? Not so different from status-quo, but if status-quo is zero - then it will be perpetually being put into a bad state by trivial junk.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @09:28PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @09:28PM (#675323)

          > 750 watt RF transistors for 900 MHz ISM apps (or ham apps for me, I guess),

          YES!!!!

          > damn $315.89 each

          Fuuuuuuck. :(

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by moondrake on Tuesday May 01 2018, @09:52PM

      by moondrake (2658) on Tuesday May 01 2018, @09:52PM (#674328)

      > If I "had that in an e-mail, somewhere" I can usually find it in my Gmail.

      You can?

      My biggest complaint against gmail is that it seems to have the most atrocious search functionality that I can think of. I have no idea now to find things in long threads quickly, as the result of a search is the whole thread instead of a message (that thread, in my case, can be 100 mails long). I also have not had much luck with using AND OR or wildcards in searches.

      This, ironically, from a company that got big through searches.

      I bet they did not improve this functionality though.

    • (Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday May 02 2018, @08:32PM

      by cmdrklarg (5048) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 02 2018, @08:32PM (#674747)

      Corporate makes our IT auto-destruct email after 2 years

      Man I wish we could do something like that here. Several packrats working here, always complaining about full mailboxes. Even had one fill up a 20Gb archive file. To be fair she does have to deal with a ridiculous amount of email and is pretty diligent about paring it down, but man they keep a ton of history around here. Don't get me started about having to get a microfiche reader working to view some OLLLD pay stubs.

      --
      The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.