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Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

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Re: Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

#81

Post by JoshTriplett »

londons_explore wrote: post #71
prophesi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the very least, I can confirm that ProtonMail and Apple's Mail clients let you search through the message contents of encrypted email. I'm sure there's a performance hit, and admins wouldn't be able to search through the encrypted emails of their Workspace users, but that's a much more reasonable tradeoff.

I'd be interested to know the implementation... Most search-over-encrypted-documents implementations either don't scale well (eg. require the client to do all the indexing and upload the encrypted index), or have reduced privacy (allowing the server to infer which words are in which document).

> require the client to do all the indexing and upload the encrypted index

Or just require the client to do the indexing and the searching, and not upload the index anywhere.

Re: Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

#82

Post by paxys »

cientifico wrote: post #9

That is not Generally available: Availability * Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Education Standard customers * Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers * Not available to users with personal Google A…

Generally Available in software terms means out of beta, i.e. launched.

Whether it is available to everyone for free, requires a specific plan etc. is not part of the determination.

Re: Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

#83

Post by paxys »

I'm surprised it took them this long. Outlook/Exchange has supported IRM protected emails since 2007. Little things like these show why Microsoft has an unassailable lead in enterprise software and Google, despite all of its resources, is forever playing catch up.

Re: Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

#84

Post by eli »

influx wrote: post #59
mattzito wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will just repeat over and over again, that is absolutely not true. Your email data is not used for ad targeting, search personalization, or anything else. Nothing inside of Google Workspace - drive, docs, sheets, slides, chat, gmail, keep, etc. is used for any purpose outside of workspace. Source: worked on workspace for years

What about Google Purchases reading my Amazon receipts? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/google-gmail-tracks-purchase... Now my Amazon emails are neutered. Thanks.

FTA: "We don’t use any information from your Gmail messages to serve you ads, and that includes the email receipts and confirmations shown on the Purchase page"

Other companies like unroll.me, however, were absolutely data mining your receipts and then selling the results.

Re: Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

#85

Post by prophesi »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #81
londons_explore wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to know the implementation... Most search-over-encrypted-documents implementations either don't scale well (eg. require the client to do all the indexing and upload the encrypted index), or have reduced privacy (allowing the server to infer which words are in which document).

> require the client to do all the indexing and upload the encrypted index Or just require the client to do the indexing and the searching, and not upload the index anywhere.

Yep. Not sure how Apple/Proton implement it, but that's exactly what Tutanota does. https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/first-search-encrypted-data

Re: Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

#86

Post by shadowgovt »

kybernetikos wrote: post #23
xinu2020 wrote: post #10

>Availability > >Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Education Standard customers >Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers >Not available to users with personal Google Accounts Also to be available it m…

Yeah, It's understandable that they would use this as a differentiator, but in reality, we all gain when encryption is rolled out more broadly.

Who is "we" in this context?

Re: Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

#87

Post by idiotsecant »

mattzito wrote: post #57
idiotsecant wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I will just repeat over and over again, that is absolutely not true. Your email data is not used for ad targeting, search personalization, or anything else. Nothing inside of Google Workspace - drive, docs, sheets, slides, chat, gmail, keep, etc. is used for any purpose outside of workspace. Source: worked on workspace for years

Google isn't monetizing my email contents? I have to admit I'm skeptical but if that's the case I can't imagine that staying true forever. What incentive does google have to run Gmail then? How does Gmail make money?

Re: Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

#89

Post by jcrites »

bgitarts wrote: post #88

Not available to users with personal Google Accounts. Why not?

I’m speculating about how this works, but it probably doesn’t make sense for general-purpose email.

For emails between members of one workspace/domain, you can conceptually perform key exchange to implement client-side encryption. You also don’t have spam concerns within members of a workspace.

There’s no general way to do key exchange between different email domains, and you do have spam concerns (which to address requires scanning the content).

There’s no protocol for doing such things over different email domains in a way that’s compatible and interoperable across software stacks. This technology is proprietary, and would make spam challenging to deal with (which again is not a problem within one workspace).

It’s also not clear to me whether this is really client-side encryption, so much as encryption at a layer higher than the email stack. (It’s pretty hard to do client-side encryption in the browser, in a way that matches user expectations. How do you store/retrieve the encryption key?)

Re: Client-side encryption for Gmail in Google Workspace is now generally available

#90

Post by Scion9066 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #87
mattzito wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will just repeat over and over again, that is absolutely not true. Your email data is not used for ad targeting, search personalization, or anything else. Nothing inside of Google Workspace - drive, docs, sheets, slides, chat, gmail, keep, etc. is used for any purpose outside of workspace. Source: worked on workspace for years

Google isn't monetizing my email contents? I have to admit I'm skeptical but if that's the case I can't imagine that staying true forever. What incentive does google have to run Gmail then? How does Gmail make money?

Two ways I can see as an outsider: 1. Google Drive/One/whatever subscriptions to pay for more storage if you want to keep your old emails/files in their cloud. 2. Keeping people signed into their Google account for email could make them easier to track as they're also identified/signed in elsewhere on the web.
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