Gmail Confidential Mode Is Misleading; Could Expose Users To Phishing Attacks

Alongside the major Gmail blueprint refresh, which brought a new UI, offline support, and many other smart features, Google besides rolled out a new privacy-focused feature called Confidential Mode.

As the name suggests, this new feature is focused on providing you a secure channel to exchange e-mails but the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) believes that such claims are just misleading. The confidential emails get deleted automatically afterwards a fixed expiry menstruation and do not let users to impress or forward them, only it however has huge gaping security issues.

Firstly, the EFF says that emails you send using this feature are not as confidential equally Google claimsthey're not cease-to-end encrypted (E2E) and can be seen by Google'southward electronic mail reading systems. Yes, you might set a passcode or an expiration date only the contents of the e-mail are not completely hidden from the tech giant, who does store a re-create on its servers.

This means that expiring messages take no meaning for the sender equally the messages are not completely ephemeral. The confidential email may vanish from the recipient'southward inbox, but they can take a screenshot and or a photograph of it.

Plus, that'south not all. It has been found that confidential emails practice not fully disappear from the sender's sent folder. As you tin can see in the screenshot below, nosotros had tested the confidential e-mail feature when it was rolled out in May, and nosotros are able to retrieve the contents even today.

Farther, EFF goes on to betoken out that the confidential mode feature can expose the phone number of the recipient and requite malicious actors access to two very important pieces of data at once – an email accost and the associated phone number, since this piece of information is required for the passcode feature to work. A lot of the time the recipient'due south mobile number would exist entered without their consent, which is another privacy concern.

In improver, cybersecurity officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have claimed that Gmail has vulnerabilities that could lead to phishing attacks and betrayal the personal data of users. The DHS says confidential mode requires you to click a link to view the message, which could exist a window for hackers to trick unsuspecting users.

While the 'confidential mode' sounds fun and safe, all of the aforementioned points should brand you wary of using information technology. And even if it's non exploited past malicious actors, it's certainly not as secure equally Google made it out to be.

Source: https://beebom.com/gmail-confidential-mode-is-misleading-says-eff-could-expose-users-to-phishing-attacks/

Posted by: vaillancourtthioseen.blogspot.com

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