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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

#151

Post by jimbobimbo »

sametmax wrote: post #105
danShumway wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in a locked down ChromeOS device, won't hitting Ctrl-S in the browser still work?

Or screen capture, or inspect element, or taking a picture with your phone, or JS injection, or using an extension, or IMAP... The only way for this to work is to restrict the user freedom so much it will: - cost a huge amount of money - lower the productivity - kill the mood of everybody My take on this is that if your industry really needs this kind of feature, either you suck as a human being and I don't want to w…

If IRM is done correctly, screen capture will not work either.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#152

Post by icedchai »

cookingrobot wrote: post #58
behringer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But as a worker in a corporation, the chances that you would want an email so badly that you start breaking more corporate rules trying to get a copy of an email is very unlikely at least for common everyday work. This could be a useful feature when dealing with PHI, legal, HR, etc.

I know people who have taken photos of protected documents with their phones to send to their team, because IT couldn’t get their permissions working properly. It seems like it’s not worth the risk to break an obvious rule like that, but when you’re the manager the responsibility lands on you to get your team the info they need.

What's the "risk"? You're going to get in trouble? Get a talking to? The risk is near zero.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#153

Post by srfilipek »

dymk wrote: post #137
okmokmz wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd trust a company thats primary business model is based on the mass collection, analysis, and monetization of user data to protect your private data? Not saying I trust proton mail, but as far as I'm concerned Google is a malicious actor when it comes to my data same as Facebook, and I believe it's in individuals's best interest to limit their exposure

I trust the company who is under global regulatory scrutiny 24/7, and watched like hawks by every major news organization in the world for them to slip up. If Protonmail fucks up, there's not going to be a NYT article about it.

Think about the different user bases and sources of revenue.

If google screws up, they might see a small blip in add revenue before recovering.

If Protonmail screws up, then they'll lose paying customers which is their only source (presumably) of revenue.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#154

Post by politician »

afandian wrote: post #45
lawfulcactus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth mentioning that all these measures can be fairly trivially defeated by the analog loophole[1]. I suppose it's harder to prove authenticity in that case, however. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_loophole

Allow me to sell your organisation some VR goggles with iris-reading DRM protection. Your browser won't display on any other screen. And Google Services won't work in any other browser.

This is an arms race. Allow me to use an iris app on my smartphone to defeat your iris-reading DRM while I take a video of the content.

It's not possible to do what Gmail wants to do without a SCIF.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Inform...

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#155

Post by eropple »

derefr wrote: post #19
dheera wrote: post #3

"Options for recipients to forward, copy, print, or download this email's contents will be disabled." I simply don't understand how they think they can get away with this foolishness. I can forward, copy, print, or download ANYTHING that passes over my ethernet cables. Your silly UI will ultimately never stop me from wiresharking my own cables in my own home and doing whatever the hell I want with any bits of informa…

Consider for a moment: a company or school set up as an Enterprise Mobile Device Management provider, handing everyone out ChromeOS devices, setting up their GSuite domain so that nobody can connect to their GSuite GMail accounts except through the ChromeOS device (or an equivalent MDMed mobile device), and setting up an automatic, un-disable-able VPN on those devices for accessing Google domains. I think that’s the…

> I used to work at IBM, and they had a very similar setup—company issued laptop, app that enforces MDM profile installation, VPN that checks with the app to ensure MDM is active before connecting, email servers only accessibly through said VPN

Unless you were on a Fedora workstation.

That was a fun discovery. Never figured out who at IT I should inform before I quit.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#156

Post by reaperducer »

sowbug wrote: post #115
dheera wrote: post #3

"Options for recipients to forward, copy, print, or download this email's contents will be disabled." I simply don't understand how they think they can get away with this foolishness. I can forward, copy, print, or download ANYTHING that passes over my ethernet cables. Your silly UI will ultimately never stop me from wiresharking my own cables in my own home and doing whatever the hell I want with any bits of informa…

Dude, come on. You do understand. The feature is like a fence in a yard. It separates the honest from the dishonest, forcing the clueless/negligent/reckless to pick a side. Nobody believes fences stop criminals, and nobody believes Gmail has ended the DRM arms race.

Nobody believes fences stop criminals

Then why is every military base surrounded by a fence?

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#157

Post by bongobongo »

crazypyro wrote: post #107
dewey wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are on the internet the NSA is spying on you and everyone else. There's a difference between passively collecting and actively targeting.

Right, but the switch is flipped from passive collection to active targeting in secret court hearings* and if they already have been passively collecting, you could go from no concern to being actively targeted without ever knowing. They couldn't do this if they weren't drag-netting. *FISA courts have 11 denied requests and over 34,000 approved.

11 denied requests? Those prosecutors must have been sloppy. Usually you don’t see denials because prosecutors know well enough not to waste the court’s time.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#158

Post by rolltiide »

slips wrote: post #131
rolltiide wrote: post #106

All of this applies to making a new protonmail account too Requires SMS verification or an impassable captcha loop if over TOR And payment with a credit card The cryptocurrency payment option with non-user identifiable info only being available to existing protonmail accounts where that info was already harvested So it is ironic to see protonmail calling out those specific things about gmail confidential

Protonmail does those thongs to try and prevent bad actors or bots from making encrypted accounts to hide their shady tracks. Not for data collection that they'll sell for a profit. Don't be so glib as to state you can't see the difference.

From their home page:

> Secure Your Communications with ProtonMail

> Anonymous Email

> No personal information is required to create your secure email account.

requires personal information to create the secure email account

"Protonmail does those thongs to try and prevent bad actors or bots from making encrypted accounts to hide their shady tracks."

oh okay, pack it up everyone, don't listen to glib ole me coming to a rational conclusion

its IRONIC that I have to trust them as much as I have to trust Gmail confidential's claims about what they may actually do with the data collection. or what they may be coerced to do with the data collection. "Swiss law" doesn't prevent that.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#159

Post by snug »

FDSGSG wrote: post #65
dheera wrote: post #3

"Options for recipients to forward, copy, print, or download this email's contents will be disabled." I simply don't understand how they think they can get away with this foolishness. I can forward, copy, print, or download ANYTHING that passes over my ethernet cables. Your silly UI will ultimately never stop me from wiresharking my own cables in my own home and doing whatever the hell I want with any bits of informa…

>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.

Really, it keeps honest people honest, it's like a lock on a gate, anyone can get around it, but if they see that it's locked (or they can't forward a message) then they won't try to circumvent. I don't see why it's so hard for some to understand this

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#160

Post by michaelmior »

rndgermandude wrote: post #130
michaelmior wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised no one has come up with a browser extension yet that circumvents this. I'm guessing it would be fairly trivial to do so.

There is honestly no actual demand for something like that, I'd guess. Screenshots are easy, and your OS usually comes with a built-in tool. And how to use that tool (or find a tool) is a matter of typing "how do I screenshot on X" into google. And if even this is still too "technical" for a user, I have seen people take literal shots of their screens, with their phone camera or whatever.

Sure, but screenshots don't give you text. Sure you can re-type or use some OCR tool after the fact, but it's one extra step.
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