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Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

techcrunch.com

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Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#31

Post by y4mi »

peatmoss wrote: post #18
matthewaveryusa wrote: post #7

What a bunch of hype garbage this is. If you send something in plaintext to a server it's already game over. If Google was serious about privacy it would pgp-encrypt everything so only the client, client-side can decrypt it, just like what protonmail does. pfff, 'self destructing emails', what a heaping pile of razzle dazzle no-ops that is -- this is more likely subliminal advertisement for the new mission impossible…

I feel like client-side email encryption is a missed opportunity for Apple. Easy encrypted email would fit nicely into their narrative of “we can offer privacy features that Google can’t, because we sell you stuff”

Encryption doesn't work unless both sides use it.

Apple supporting it won't help apple users one bit, because nobody else uses an actual application to check mails anymore. It's mostly web mail clients everywhere, and they obviously can't use encryption.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#32

Post by Someone1234 »

matthewaveryusa wrote: post #7

What a bunch of hype garbage this is. If you send something in plaintext to a server it's already game over. If Google was serious about privacy it would pgp-encrypt everything so only the client, client-side can decrypt it, just like what protonmail does. pfff, 'self destructing emails', what a heaping pile of razzle dazzle no-ops that is -- this is more likely subliminal advertisement for the new mission impossible…

Except in info-sec there's different degrees of information disclosure. You seem to be focused on mitigating disclosure to government, Google, or a rogue employee of either one but the scope is significantly larger and more diverse than that.

The biggest benefit of this is removing the email from archives, so weeks, months, or years later if the account gets compromised the gains are lower. For example an email with the subject "HIV Test Results" has a far different value with and without a body included.

A more down-to-earth example is I just sent my wife a W-2 via email for our taxes. I asked her to delete the email after downloading the document. But instead I could have just set an expiration on the contents and poof it is gone.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#34

Post by caiw »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #15
kome wrote: post #9

Please, let's not "disrupt" the email: it's so beautiful because it's so standard. For example, google's dot rules already (ko.me@gmail.com = kome@gmail.com) make no sense and break many applications: they need to stop. I like innovation, but to innovate email wouldn't be better to innovate in a slow and consensual way using RFC after RFC, at least in the case of email?

email was killed by spam, current email is sadly a walking zombie that's getting eaten by maggots

I have very little problem with spam; server-side filtering and client-side filtering make it nearly a non-issue for me. Email was no more killed by spam than online discussion threads were.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#35

Post by bluGill »

peatmoss wrote: post #18
matthewaveryusa wrote: post #7

What a bunch of hype garbage this is. If you send something in plaintext to a server it's already game over. If Google was serious about privacy it would pgp-encrypt everything so only the client, client-side can decrypt it, just like what protonmail does. pfff, 'self destructing emails', what a heaping pile of razzle dazzle no-ops that is -- this is more likely subliminal advertisement for the new mission impossible…

I feel like client-side email encryption is a missed opportunity for Apple. Easy encrypted email would fit nicely into their narrative of “we can offer privacy features that Google can’t, because we sell you stuff”

Useful client side encryption is hard. If the user doesn't understand what they are doing feel like they have security when in reality any script kiddie can break their encryption.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#37

Post by mikro2nd »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #6

can't wait till this is used as an excuse to break SMTP compatability.

First they came for my XMPP, and I did nothing because I didn't use Jabber, Then they came for my RSS, and I did nothing because I didn't read newsfeeds, ...

> the company is now evolving beyond the simple POP3/IMAP/SMTP protocols

Seems almost as though Google has learned the "Adopt, adapt, decomoditise" mantra so beloved by Microsoft in days of yore.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#38

Post by ksk »

matte_black wrote: post #22
simplicio wrote: post #14

Seems annoying. No one would rely on this to keep actual sensitive info private, since you can just screen shot it. On the other hand, part of the point of Gmail is that it makes your emails easily searchable, so you can quickly dig up info from old mail rather than have to make a note of said info in some sepearate program/notebook/whatever. But if emails are going to randomly be disappearing, it could really crippl…

Why do people keep bringing up screenshots as some kind of evidence of something that was said? I can easily go into an email, bring up the source code, edit the email body to have some racist tirade, then screenshot the edited email and use that as “evidence” against a person.

Nobody is actually doing that. You are confusing evidence against someone versus "I better make a copy of this for myself before it stops working".

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#39

Post by greenail »

Assuming gmail and g-suite share technology, I doubt any enterprise customers would be comfortable with the content of the email actually being purged. I'd guess there is some backdoor for corporate compliance and auditing reasons.

I also don't see any reason you couldn't build a bot that grabs these for you to keep via the gmail add on api.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#40

Post by Someone1234 »

peatmoss wrote: post #13

This is only possible if one believes in the capacity to control client security on the other side. There’s also the problem that something viewable by the recipient’s eyeballs is also photographable by the recipient’s camera. Moreover, I worry about the new Gmail feature that undermine the open platform of email. Email is just about the last unwalled comms platform we have, and I really worry for its safety if gmail…

Email is doomed either way. The standard is indefinitely stuck in "IE6" mode, where there's few if any improvements, updates, or fixes. Everyone time anyone suggests significant improvements one of the big players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, etc) says no and it stalls.

If email gets a "HTML5"-like major refresh at some point then I'd be proven wrong but that hasn't happened yet in my lifetime. Microsoft in particular between Outlook.com, 365, and Exchange/Outlook Desktop are a major hindrance to any advancement.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Mail_Transfer_Protocol#...

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