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Google doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to user privacy, but every once in a while, they do something surprising. Back in April, the company began testing end-to-end encrypted email messaging for enterprise users. On Thursday, it officially rolled out the feature. If you have a Google Workspace through work, you should now be able to send emails protected by E2EE, even if you’re sending the email outside of Gmail. That should make it possible to send emails that only you, the recipient, and the IT department that manages your account can access.
E2EE is essential for anyone who wants to ensure that their communications are totally private. To simplify a complex technology, encrypting something like an email essentially means scrambling all of the code into something completely unrecognizable. In order to unscramble it, you need a “key.” In the case of Gmail’s E2EE, you have a key, the recipient has a key, and whoever manages your Google Workspace account has a key. The keys to decrypt these emails aren’t saved on Google’s servers, so even Google should have no way to access your encrypted emails. You can send things like sensitive company information or medical information protected by HIPAA without worrying about prying eyes intercepting the message.
The only bummer here is that E2EE in Gmail is restricted to business accounts at this time. That said, there is a way to send more secure messages over a standard Gmail account—just don’t expect E2EE-level protections.
E2EE for enterprise Gmail users
Credit: Google
In order to send E2EE emails through your enterprise Gmail account, you need to ensure your Workspace admin turns it on. Once they do, you’ll need to tell Gmail you want to send your email with E2EE. To do so, open Gmail, and choose “Compose” to start a new email. Choose “Message security,” then, under “Additional encryption,” choose “Turn on.” From here, you can compose your message as you normally would, adding your recipients to the list.
If your recipient is another Google Workspace user, the message will automatically be decrypted when it reaches their inbox. If they aren’t a Gmail user, they won’t be able to decrypt the email in their client. Instead, they’ll receive a link that opens a “restricted” version of Gmail. Once they sign in, the message will decrypt, and they’ll be able to read and respond to it from this restricted window. Note that IT departments can choose to have all E2EE messages open in restricted Gmail windows, even if the recipients are Google Workspace users.
Use confidential mode to send “secure” messages for free
If you don’t have an enterprise account, there really isn’t any way to send E2EE emails through Gmail. For that, you’d need a dedicated encrypted email service, like Proton. However, you can add an extra layer of security to your messages before you send them out.
What do you think so far?
To do so, start a new email in Gmail, then choose “Confidential mode” from the options. This mode blocks recipients from forwarding, copying, printing, or downloading the email. You can also choose to have the message expire after a set period of time—including one day, one week, one month, three months, or five years—as well as password protect the email. If you choose the latter, Gmail will automatically generate a password and send it to the recipients via SMS.
These added protections are certainly helpful when sending sensitive information over Gmail, but they’re imperfect. Again, this is not end-to-end encryption, which means it’s possible to intercept and read messages sent this way. More practically, there’s nothing stopping users from taking photos of the message with another device—though the same could be said with E2EE messages.
Unless you have an enterprise account, I’d avoid sending anything too important via Gmail at this time. You’re better off using a dedicated E2EE platform, like Signal, WhatsApp, or iMessage.
