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Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

protonmail.com

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Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#71

Post by FDSGSG »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #69
FDSGSG wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All it does is fool a bunch of less-tech-savvy people into a false sense of security. Nonsense, it does a great job of discouraging people from forwarding, copying, printing or downloading the emails contents. Sure, it'll do nothing with a malicious recipient but incompetent recipients are vastly more common than malicious recipients.

You have to be a special kind of stupid to not be able to get around this "security".

Who cares? This isn't supposed to stop anyone from intentionally doing bad things, this is supposed to make people stop and think "Huh, maybe I'm just not supposed to forward this email"

It's really bizarre that so many people on HN can't seem to understand this. Do you guys ever interact with other human beings?

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#73

Post by kdmccormick »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #68

Article makes good points. But clearly they are promoting their own product, over Gmail, and compete directly with them. One thing I find troubling is that they seem to be making their own false claim. >Because we do not have access to the recipient’s private key, we are never able to read the message. We do have access to metadata, like the email addresses, timestamp, and subject line. I am not sure how proton could…

I don't see where they claim they don't know the recipient's address.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#74

Post by Dylan16807 »

wibble10 wrote: post #62
jvolkman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said the emails aren't scanned; they're just not used as context for ads. Obviously they're scanned, otherwise spam filtering wouldn't be possible.

I think there’s a difference between scanning all incoming mail for spam and keeping a details list of my purchase history by scanning my inbox for receipts somehow... If they aren’t using this data for context ads it must be being used for something else otherwise why would they do it?

The list of purchases is the feature.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#76

Post by erichurkman »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #69
FDSGSG wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All it does is fool a bunch of less-tech-savvy people into a false sense of security. Nonsense, it does a great job of discouraging people from forwarding, copying, printing or downloading the emails contents. Sure, it'll do nothing with a malicious recipient but incompetent recipients are vastly more common than malicious recipients.

You have to be a special kind of stupid to not be able to get around this "security".

I think of it less as stopping people from 'getting around' the 'security' and more an extra level of protection & awareness against accidental forwards or replies.

It can't stop malicious actors, of course.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#77

Post by oarsinsync »

mda wrote: post #44
gyaniv wrote: post #26

Yes, Google isn't untrustworthy and doesn't care about the users privacy, we knew that, but the general public that isn't as aware (at this point it's hard to be completely unaware) also doesn't read this private company blog, so it doesn't really help much (except advertise the company). We should be thinking of ways to improve the situation for everyone (not saying I have the solution), but personally (and unfortun…

I would trust Google and Gmail way more than protonmail and whatever company behind it for protecting my private data to be honest.

I understand the perspective and opinion, but I like to think about incentives and consequences.

What's Google's incentive to protect your privacy, and what are the consequences if they fail to?

Compared to a firm that is marketing services on the proposition of privacy being at the core, the risks to Google's business, reputation and finances are likely minimal.

Whereas, if one of the firms that markets providing services focused on your privacy is found to be intentionally and wilfully violating that, it ceases to be a violation of trust and becomes a violation of contract, false advertising... essentially fraud, and the consequences of deliberately misleading and defrauding customers is more significant than an accidental (or wilful) privacy breach by a corporation that openly markets itself as not respecting its users privacy.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#78

Post by [deleted] »

kdmccormick wrote: post #73
hitpointdrew wrote: post #68

Article makes good points. But clearly they are promoting their own product, over Gmail, and compete directly with them. One thing I find troubling is that they seem to be making their own false claim. >Because we do not have access to the recipient’s private key, we are never able to read the message. We do have access to metadata, like the email addresses, timestamp, and subject line. I am not sure how proton could…

I don't see where they claim they don't know the recipient's address.

[deleted]

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#79

Post by notyourloops »

mda wrote: post #44
gyaniv wrote: post #26

Yes, Google isn't untrustworthy and doesn't care about the users privacy, we knew that, but the general public that isn't as aware (at this point it's hard to be completely unaware) also doesn't read this private company blog, so it doesn't really help much (except advertise the company). We should be thinking of ways to improve the situation for everyone (not saying I have the solution), but personally (and unfortun…

I would trust Google and Gmail way more than protonmail and whatever company behind it for protecting my private data to be honest.

Why trust either of them?

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#80

Post by lloydde »

wool_gather wrote: post #50
lloydde wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads.” https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

This can be parsed two different ways, though: We will not scan your messages. (One possible reason we would have done this would be for advertising.) vs. We will not use the scans we perform on your messages to make advertising decisions. I'm honestly not sure which it is (although I also don't care much personally since I don't use Gmail).

We know that all email providers scan our email. This is considered necessary to reduce spam.
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