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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/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by captain normal on Tuesday May 01 2018, @04:24PM (7 children)
Obviously none of you who've posted by now have bothered to read past the headline or through the summary, much less RTFA. This is for "Enterprise" users and confidential mode has to be switched on. It is not baked into every g-mail account. Google does a lot of stuff that annoys the hell in me, like making bad changes to Google maps and their browser. I use their web e-mail for things like registering at sites like S/N. I also use a few other web based e-mail services for similar reasons. For my on personal real life e-mail I pay for for an web based e-mail from a local provider where I know the people who own it.
Sure the summary is written as "click bait" (it was of course written by a well known fisherman), and everyone likes to rag on Google (and MS and Apple) but there are a lot worse big corps out there...ATT, Comcast, Verizon etc.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Tuesday May 01 2018, @04:54PM (4 children)
Fair points, but they're still encouraging 'enterprise' users to think that they can send a document and later withdraw access. If the recipient isn't trusted, it solves nothing, but possibly gives the sender a dangerous false sense of security. If the recipient is trusted, what's the point?
The correct way forward on this front is to educate the non-technical users that it simply isn't possible to do that kind of thing. Access to a digital document can be granted, or not, but 'grant now and revoke later' simply isn't something you can do. No amount of DRM and obfuscation will stop the recipient pointing a smartphone camera at his screen, no matter how strongly some organisations [datarooms.com] wish it were possible (and even pretend that it is).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 01 2018, @05:43PM (3 children)
As the admin of a paid gmail enterprise account, yes we can certainly do that easily at the account level. And having essentially "root" on the domain at some great mostly manual effort I can delete any individual document I want. Once it leaves our domain by whatever means, its on the loose of course.
What this is doing is giving any individual sender "root" over what they send, without having to bother me to do it for them, I'm not sure your average goofball should be trusted even with something that limited, but here it is...
I can't wait for the support tickets by some goofball who doesn't understand it only works internal to the domain so emailing his sexting noodz to his ex-girlfriend's AOL address doesn't prevent them from getting posted for laughs by her on a fake grindr account with his real contact info. Not that I was ever involved in a support ticket... exactly... like that. Being an admin account isn't unicorns and balloons all day. Ugh. We're talking (admittedly some years ago) about a guy so dumb he thought deleting the email from his sent folder deleted the email from her inbox, like dude, was that a plot line on CSI, maybe I don't even want to know. And my coworkers laughed their asses off at the humor of escalating this critical issue all the way up to me, thanks guys, thanks.
But there are the longer term wider range issues to discuss before they inevitably expand this to all gmail users someday.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday May 01 2018, @07:53PM
->"As the admin of a paid gmail enterprise account, yes we can certainly do that easily at the account level."
I do understand what you're saying, but you've basically placed it all on that last phrase - "at the account level" which has to be understood exactly as you intend it for this to be true.
Most gmail users would not understand it that way, and even if you exhausted yourself explaining it to them they still wouldn't actually understand that phrase.
So it may be technically true but it's deceptive as hell. In the sense that the vast majority of gmail users would understand it, it's false. You can't send self-destructing emails. Telling people they can, and even giving them a button for that purpose, and rigging it so that certain tests will appear to confirm that it's really a self destructing email - this will only lead to users believing in even more impossible magic.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday May 02 2018, @09:27AM
No, of course you can't. If I took a permanent copy of that document (i.e. a photo or video on my phone), I'll still have it when you revoke access.
We aren't talking about write-access to a shared file, we're talking about read access to a confidential document. If that is ever granted to an untrusted party, it's game over. They can always find a way to keep a permanent copy. You can play games with DRM and page-view-tracking if you want, but it changes nothing.
I don't really see where the rest of your comment goes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @11:45AM
Allowing an admin to do it is different from allowing any moron to do it in that an admin (hopefully) understands what is possible and what isn't, and can explain to the user "no, removing it from our end will not remove it from their mail server, which I don't have access to".
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday May 01 2018, @07:06PM
Yep, and if they're doing to Enterprise customers, they CAN roll it out to everybody. And will when it is profitable for them to do so. Time to stop this before then as it has implications for everyone else.
(Though now that I think about it I think Exchange has a similar setting to allow mail recalls IIRC).
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 01 2018, @07:33PM
From what I read and the language used in the summary, these features are for all Gmail users, not just enterprise.
They aren't too bad, but they could definitely give users a false sense of security. A real secure use of Gmail would involve the user encrypting messages with a private key not stored by Google (perhaps accessed from a file on your computer for convenience purposes).
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