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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

#61

Post by danShumway »

sigmar wrote: post #54
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…

>Note: Although confidential mode helps prevent the recipients from accidentally sharing your email, it doesn't prevent recipients from taking screenshots or photos of your messages or attachments. Recipients who have malicious programs on their computer may still be able to copy or download your messages or attachments. If you click the "learn more" in gmail it says that ^. Gmail seems pretty upfront about what "con…

> Recipients who have malicious programs on their computer may still be able to copy or download your messages or attachments.

Even this is really poorly worded. You don't need a "malicious" program on your computer, you just need to go to your browser menu and hit the print button.

This still makes it sound like the average user won't be able to save your email unless they're doing some kind of tech mumbo-jumbo -- that your real risk is if an IT person gets a hold of it. But printing or saving a web page are basically the first thing I would teach anyone to do if I were mentoring them on how to use a computer.

Probably every secretary in your office already knows how to get around this restriction.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#62

Post by wibble10 »

jvolkman wrote: post #52
wibble10 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don’t scrape your email how is this page generated then? https://myaccount.google.com/purchases

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?

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#64

Post by pwodhouse »

mulmen wrote: post #46
Shebanator wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that is equally true for products like protonmail that use end-to-end encryption and for those that don't do any encryption at all.

e2e encryption solves a totally different problem. If you don't trust the intended recipient of a message don't send it. e2e helps make sure nobody else receives the message. Google is making an entirely different claim about controlling the actions of a third party. It's fundamentally impossible to do what Google is claiming.

What is Google claiming that you think is impossible?

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#65

Post by FDSGSG »

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.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#66

Post by TeMPOraL »

dheera wrote: post #42
paulcole wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't the light from the copier reflect off the screen and ruin the image? When I was in college (early 2000s) a local company sold notes/study guides for different courses. But they were printed in black text on dark green paper to prevent photocopying and sharing. Good idea on their part but I used my digital camera to take photos of the pages and cranked up the details to make them look like blackish text on white…

So open the e-mail on a Kindle, or put an antiglare screen in front of your phone, or just take a picture of one phone with another phone if the screenshot button doesn't work . I do remember some app not "letting" me screenshot something with stock Android, which I felt to be a violation of my freedom. Obviously in my case just use a modified Android ROM without the silly anti-screenshotting logic, or screenshot it…

> I do remember some app not "letting" me screenshot something with stock Android, which I felt to be a violation of my freedom.

Bank apps tend to do that. When I first hit this issue, it also felt like a violation of my freedom, and it was also very annoying because I badly needed to make that screenshot.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#67

Post by notimetorelax »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #31

The point of confidential mode is for corporate users. When the CEO sends out that confidential mail to the company, it adds a speed bump to users who are about to copy out data that they have been told they should not, so they get a chance to realize they should not do this, and then removes all plausible deniability when they choose to bypass that speed bump.

Agree to that, it’s a pretty strong signal stating possible appropriate uses. If I receive an encrypted MS Office document with Do Not Forward policy, I know that if I want to share it further I need to ask the permission from the sender.

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#68

Post by hitpointdrew »

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 send messages to anyone if they didn't know the recipients address!

EDIT: I'm stupid, please disregard this. They clearly state that the DO have access to metadata (for some reason my head read it as DO NOT).

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#69

Post by hitpointdrew »

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.

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

Re: Gmail confidential mode is not secure or private

#70

Post by pwodhouse »

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?

It's used for Assistant
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