Is Gmail’s new Confidential Mode the Snapchat-ification of Email?
Without a lot of fanfare this summer, Gmail has gone “confidential.”
Google announced that on June 25, 2019, Gmail’s new Confidential Mode will be switched on by default as the feature becomes generally available for both G-Suite and personal users.
For email recipients, it means that an email can be set to effectively self destruct after it’s been opened and read. No copying, forwarding or downloading either; email just vanishes as if it had never been.
Confidential Mode is generally hailed as a win for personal privacy. Imagine, though, that you’re on the receiving end of a stream of harassing, abusive or otherwise incriminating email... Who’s privacy is protected then?
How Does “Confidential Mode” Work?
In Confidential Mode, emails can be sent with an expiration date, after which the message will permanently vanish from a receiver’s account. Once an email ‘expires’ it will continue to exist in the sender’s Sent folder, but for the receiver it’ll become a shell of the message, living only as a subject line in their inbox.
Sender’s can also revoke previously sent messages altogether. Excellent for those “on second thought” moments, it means access can suddenly be removed whether the recipient has read the email or not.
But wait! There’s more! Users also have the option to lock email messages with a two-factor SMS authentication password. In this case, recipients receive a code via text message to enter before they can view the email.
Confidential Mode works seamlessly when both the sender and recipient are Gmail users. If you’re on another platform like Outlook, however, or if you use Gmail as a third-party email client, you’ll get a link in your inbox instead of an email message. Clicking the link opens the message in your browser where you’ll have to enter a pass-code sent by text before accessing the message itself — this, whether two factor authentication was selected or not.
The whole process has been described by users as “a little clumsy.”
But here’s the real rub for messages sent in Confidential Mode: Recipients can’t forward, print, download or copy the contents of an email.
Why is this a problem? In the case of harassment or stalking, for instance, preserving messages as evidence is suddenly no longer a straight-forward process.
Why Has Google Done This?
The intent of Confidential Mode is to give people control over who can and can’t see their email’s message and attachments. Considering seeming weekly major data breaches, heightened concern over personal security is legitimate and Confidential Mode offers an extra layer of protection for content you want to remain private.
Sending credit card, passport or other sensitive personal information over email? Confidential Mode is a great idea. Documenting threatening email for legal purposes? Not so much.
How To Manage Email in Confidential Mode
Since Confidential Mode will be switched on by default, for companies using G-Suite, Google has made administrators responsible for disabling the feature internally as well as for rejecting incoming Confidential-Mode emails. Their ability to hit a Confidential Mode kill-switch is important from an information governance and legal e-discovery perspective, to ensure corporate data is preserved.
For individual users and recipients not loving Confidential Mode, there are a few things we can do.
As a sender, you can permanently turn off Confidential Mode by toggling it to “OFF” with the little “clock” icon that appears in the Compose window.
As a recipient, if you have control over your own email server, Gmail adds a header to the messages that have Confidential Mode enabled. This means you can add a rule to the configuration on inbound SMTP servers to immediately reject any messages with the requisite header. You can couple this with an auto-respond message back to the sender explaining why their message was rejected, and to resend it with Confidential Mode turned off.
For those of us without access to our own email servers, the general recommendation is to take an old-fashioned screenshot or photo of the message and paste it into another file or email (to forward to legal counsel, for example). Inelegant, perhaps, but doable.
If that feels like more work than you want, you could also set up an auto-response notifying senders that you won’t open any email sent in Confidential Mode, and to resend with the option disabled.
Protecting the Vulnerable
Those currently in the throes documenting a contentious email relationship; those working inside a Women’s, Family or Sexual Health Agency or support network; therapists specializing in domestic abuse and legal counsel working with clients on high conflict separation, stalking or domestic violence cases all need to know enough about Confidential Mode to help guide clients through best practices for collecting and saving messages going forward.
Whether documenting email correspondence as a frame of reference for what’s transpired between people or documenting as a foundation of evidence related to an impending or current legal matter, Confidential Mode just became an added challenge for clients to overcome.
