How to ship a confidential message on Gmail

Google makes use of TLS (what is named normal encryption) to maintain your emails comparatively protected in transit. (The service does even have the safer S/MIME encryption, however it’s solely obtainable for enterprise and academic establishments.) There are, nevertheless, different methods you possibly can maintain your private knowledge slightly safer, and one is through the use of Google’s confidential mode.

Google launched its confidential mode for Gmail in 2018. The setting permits individuals to ship messages that may expire and prevents recipients from copying their contents, forwarding them to others, or downloading them.

You can use confidential mode on a desktop or via the Gmail app on cell, although whichever you utilize, you’ll must activate confidential mode every time you ship a message. Here’s find out how to do it.

In your browser

• Compose a brand new message.
• Look for the icon of a locked clock to the fitting of the Send button (it could be laborious to seek out amongst all the opposite icons, however maintain trying) and faucet it.
• A pop-up will seem that permits you to set the parameters for the way lengthy you’d like recipients to have entry to your message earlier than it expires — beginning at sooner or later and going as much as 5 years.

• Below the expiration date, you’ll see a Require Passcode class. If the individual you’re emailing has Gmail, and also you’d like an additional layer of safety, choose SMS passcode to additionally require them to enter a passcode that will probably be texted to their cellphone quantity. If your recipient doesn’t have Gmail, even when you choose No SMS passcode, they are going to be despatched a passcode by way of electronic mail.
• A notification that the message is being despatched in confidential mode will seem throughout the underside of the message.

On cell

These steps are largely the identical, however among the objects are positioned elsewhere than you’ll discover in your browser. The course of is similar for each iOS and Android variations of Gmail.

• Compose a message.
• Tap the three vertical dots within the higher proper nook of the app, then faucet Confidential mode.
• As with a browser, you’ll have the choice to set how lengthy the message ought to be viewable by recipients and whether or not it’s protected by a passcode.
• Once you’ve adjusted the settings, a message despatched in confidential mode will show a small window throughout the underside that particulars how lengthy the message will exist earlier than expiring.

Update August 18th, 2022, 2:57PM ET: This article was initially revealed on May thirty first, 2019, and has been up to date to account for adjustments within the app.