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Google Trying Out End-to-End Email Encryption

posted by martyb on Wednesday June 04 2014, @04:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-we-know-who-your-friends-are dept.

Angry Jesus writes:

Today Google announced the alpha release of a Chrome plugin that works with their Gmail service to enable end-to-end encryption for email sent through their system. This will reduce Google's ability to data-mine the content of messages, but it won't stop anyone from tracking senders and recipients. Their plugin is based on OpenPGP and they are publishing the source code.

With a focus on ease-of-use lets hope that this plugin is enough to start a broader movement towards end-to-end encryption for all email, regardless of provider.

Editor's Note: This is an early release of the code and should not be relied upon just yet. Google invites the community to test and evaluate the extension; it is even eligible for their Vulnerability Reward Program.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Silentknyght on Wednesday June 04 2014, @06:08PM

    by Silentknyght (1905) on Wednesday June 04 2014, @06:08PM (#51267)

    This doesn't make sense. It disables GMail's business model: To extract information from the messages.
    I think Google is paying lip service to privacy, hoping that nobody uses this add-on.

    Google could be treating gmail as a "loss leader," something to keep their users within the Google ecosystem, and making-up for it elsewhere (e.g., Google App store sales, music sales, etc.). I'd bet that if people got comfortable moving away from Gmail, they'd be comfortable moving away from all of Google's products & services. So... maybe smart to "give up" on email, adopt strong encryption, gain consumer good-will in doing so, and keep the users using other Google products.

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  • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Wednesday June 04 2014, @08:02PM

    by meisterister (949) on Wednesday June 04 2014, @08:02PM (#51332) Journal

    It also helps that this is a plugin for Google's browser to send messages over Google's webmail service...

    --
    (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.