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, nevertheless it’s solely accessible for enterprise and academic establishments.) There are, nonetheless, different methods you may 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 folks to ship messages that may expire and prevents recipients from copying their contents, forwarding them to others, or downloading them.

You should use confidential mode on a desktop or by the Gmail app on cell, although whichever you utilize, you’ll must activate confidential mode every time you ship a message. Right here’s the best way to do it.

In your browser

• Compose a brand new message.
• Search for the icon of a locked clock to the suitable of the Ship button (it might be exhausting 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 a way lengthy you’d like recipients to have entry to your message earlier than it expires — beginning at in the future 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 will likely be texted to their cellphone 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 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 gadgets are positioned somewhere else than you’ll discover in your browser. The method is similar 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 adjustments within the app.