> 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.
To address your concerns, every major browser supports css media queries. Gmail could simply hide the elements when the user tries to use the browser's print button. Again, this is designed to remove plausible deniability, not to provide an actually secure service. It's still email after all.
Very nice catch -- I checked and they do use media queries during print-to-pdf.
Saving the webpage itself works fine though -- which again, is a browser feature your secretary probably knows about and is comfortable using.
I guess my objection to the idea that this is just removing deniability is that it really doesn't feel to me like it's being marketed that way. I wouldn't call a service like this "confidential mode", I would call it something like "auto-delete mode". Maybe I'm just arguing over semantics though.
> Recipients of the confidential message will have options to forward, copy, print, and download disabled.
Doesn't seem to be that easy. You're probably not going to get a copy without taking a screenshot, opening up developer tools or digging into your browser's cache.
I checked, you can go to the menu at the top of your browser, and hit File->Save Page As. It took me about 15 seconds. You can also save the page as HTML only, which both prevents any weird clientside tricks that Google might like to try in the future and makes the file more portable.
Assuming you don't want to save the HTML page, you still might not even need to download a separate program to screenshot it. New installs of Firefox just have a button on the toolbar labeled, "Take a Screenshot". It'll grab the entire page without forcing you to do any scrolling, and doesn't require you to know anything about HTML. I tested, and it bypasses all of the security features on confidential emails.
People are arguing that this is designed to prevent accidental sharing, which is a really good point that I think I agree with overall. However, HN is a tech site and I'm seeing comments that say the only way you could beat this is to dig into your developer tools.
If a nontrivial portion of HN users think this service is more secure than it actually is, how much more uninformed are ordinary users? Saving a web page is not going to be a difficult problem for most people in your office to solve. So my objection here would be, Google isn't doing a good enough job of informing even tech-literate people of just how easy this is to circumvent.
A CEO is going to look at this and think, "well, I guess they're doing voodoo magic so most people in my office won't be able to share." The reality is, pretty much anyone in your office who wants to be able to beat this will be able to figure out how to do so.
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.