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Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

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Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#131

Post by landryraccoon »

mseebach wrote: post #123
landryraccoon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're really overestimating what happens in actual jury trials. When I served on a jury, a lawyer presented photographs of evidence as evidence. Like, I'm talking paper printouts of photos that were taken on a cell phone. Juries aren't full of engineers, as a general rule. If the average person on Reddit will see a screen shot of a text message and assume the conversation happened, why wouldn't an average juror? The…

The underlying mechanism there is generally that the other party doesn't contest that the printout is in fact of a picture from their phone, or that the screenshot from Reddit is in fact of something they wrote. I'm not a trial lawyer, but I suspect that it's not a great defence strategy to deny basic matters of fact.

My understanding is that judges will lean towards admitting the evidence, and if the lawyers want to bring forth experts or witnesses to undermine the evidence they are welcome to. So a screenshot of a conversation might be admitted, and the opposing lawyer would have to argue or bring forth witnesses arguing that the screenshot was faked.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#132

Post by Boulth »

e12e wrote: post #93
Someone1234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a big difference between "self-destructing g mail" and "self-destructing e mail". Even with the first, Google supports forwarding all mail to an arbitrary email address, which means the "Gmail" becomes a text-file stored on a dovecot server (or other regular mail server) somewhere. So unless they break delivery (you can forward only some subset of emails) - there's no way for the sender to have any better gua…

> At least the pgp spec has (had?) an "eyes only" flag that,

Yes, there is a flag that means "for your eyes only", see RFC [0] and GPG esoteric options [1].

[0]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4880#section-5.9

[1]: https://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/GPG-Esoter...

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#134

Post by mywittyname »

twotwotwo wrote: post #128
mtgx wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not many people are paying attention, but this is just another move from Google to make email = Gmail. It's trying to turn email into a proprietary thing that only works between Gmail addresses. All the Inbox "AI-enhanced" nonsense was also part of this plan, and I'm glad it hasn't caught on because of that. The only thing that would make me accept Gmail turning email into a less open format is if they enabled end-to…

> Not many people are paying attention, but this is just another move from Google to make email = Gmail. Agree with that. And sad and weird. There are plenty of ways to do well in business without eroding the open nature of email!

A counter argument is that email wasn't really designed with the security considerations that we have today. So while I agree with both of you, this is an eventual and necessary evolution of email.

Self-destructive and encrypted messaging is something many, many email users have wanted for years. And people who absolutely require these features (such as hospitals) have long-ago come up with similar solutions.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#135

Post by prepend »

Someone1234 wrote: post #32
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…

As a user of mail software, I don’t want the client determining what to show or not show against my wishes.

I’m organizing mail sent to me. 10k text files. The last thing I want is to debug why search isn’t finding the message because some vendor 4 years ago flagged their invoice with an expiration date.

This is not a function that as a receiver of email I want. So they can make a new protocol that I don’t use instead of overloading email.

Also, it’s a bit scary for some of the slippery slope possibilities. Will my filesystem do the same? The last thing I want is DRM checking every file.

Stuff on my machines is my data. If you don’t want me to have it, don’t send it to me. Etc etc.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#136

Post by hardly_a_mirage »

sirclueless wrote: post #94
Froyoh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to copy by disabling JavaScript

The typical way to avoid this particular problem is only to load the content via JavaScript while copy/paste are presumed disabled.

You can just use a browser dev tool like the chrome inspector to copy the text. I don't know what the big deal is.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#137

Post by sgc »

prepend wrote: post #135
Someone1234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a user of mail software, I don’t want the client determining what to show or not show against my wishes. I’m organizing mail sent to me. 10k text files. The last thing I want is to debug why search isn’t finding the message because some vendor 4 years ago flagged their invoice with an expiration date. This is not a function that as a receiver of email I want. So they can make a new protocol that I don’t use instea…

100%. What a crock this is. I would be required to do offline backups multiple times a day to keep a record. I deal with annoying tenants. Who would love their emails to disappear.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#138

Post by euyyn »

bad_user wrote: post #73
Someone1234 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not having improvements is a feature. Yes, please leave email the way it is, because it works fine. It’s one of the few things that does. The only feature I want is end to end encryption. Google will never make encryption easy on their own because they’ve got perverse incentives not to.

It works fine for some definition of "fine".

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#139

Post by jehlakj »

prepend wrote: post #135
Someone1234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a user of mail software, I don’t want the client determining what to show or not show against my wishes. I’m organizing mail sent to me. 10k text files. The last thing I want is to debug why search isn’t finding the message because some vendor 4 years ago flagged their invoice with an expiration date. This is not a function that as a receiver of email I want. So they can make a new protocol that I don’t use instea…

Seriously, this breaks the current definition of email that has been ingrained in every single person who has ever made an email account.

You receive and email. You assume that it’ll get stored in your inbox forever.

I almost want to say it’s a bug, not a feature. And I’m pretty open to software changes even if it’s a pain to get used to. But changing something as fundamental as the nature of emails in this regard gives rise to something other than an email.

Re: Google is testing expiring emails in the new Gmail

#140

Post by carussell »

icelancer wrote: post #105
jiveturkey wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not being hyped, you are just over-reacting because it doesn't meet the use case you'd prefer. It's not a security feature and it's not about privacy. Clearly, like PGP of yore which had view-only messages, one can simply copy (perhaps screencap in this case) the message and then do whatever. This is an augmentation to what postini had, and now in core G Suite, of defined retention periods for email. Now, users…

>> It's like the secret discussion/chat system that uber uses, I can't find the name, that guarantees protection against legal discovery by encrypting the chat and making sure it is ephemeral. Wickr, but while it guarantees protection from discovery, it doesn't guarantee freedom from implication. It is not legal to use such services to hide illegal activity, which is what Judge Alsup clearly laid out in the case. How…

In fact, it can lead to worse outcomes than if you simply did nothing. In Apple v Samsung, the judge instructed the jury to assume that relevant evidence was destroyed and that said evidence would have been "favorable to Apple"—as a direct consequence of Samsung's email system, which as a rule only kept messages for 14 days.

https://www.nutter.com/pp/publication-Apple-v-Samsung-Electr...

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=30282c16-31e3... (HTML version)

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