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.
(Score: 2) by DrMag on Wednesday June 04 2014, @06:12PM
That makes me wonder if an avenue of defense against the ad data mining is to attach a lengthy Lorem Ipsum on every message we send. It could easily be done in a way that is unobtrusive to the intended receiver of the actual message, but would obfuscate the real data in enough noise for some measure of protection. At least until they develop the code necessary to filter out the nonsense.