How to send a confidential message on Gmail

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

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

You need to use confidential mode on a desktop or by the Gmail app on cellular, although whichever you employ, you’ll have to activate confidential mode every time you ship a message. Right here’s how one can do it.

In your browser

• Compose a brand new message.
• Search for the icon of a locked clock to the proper of the Ship button (it could be arduous to search out amongst all the opposite icons, however preserve trying) and faucet it.
• A pop-up will seem that permits you to set the parameters for a way lengthy you’d like recipients to have entry to your message earlier than it expires — beginning at someday and going as much as 5 years.

• Under 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 can be texted to their telephone quantity. In case your recipient doesn’t have Gmail, even when you choose No SMS passcode, they are going to be despatched a passcode through e-mail.
• A notification that the message is being despatched in confidential mode will seem throughout the underside of the message.

On cellular

These steps are largely the identical, however a few of the objects are positioned somewhere else than you’ll discover in your browser. The method is identical for each iOS and Android variations of Gmail.

• Compose a message.
• Faucet 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 needs to be viewable by recipients and whether or not it’s protected by a passcode.
• When 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.

Replace August 18th, 2022, 2:57PM ET: This text was initially revealed on Might thirty first, 2019, and has been up to date to account for modifications within the app.