Other Technology | September 19, 2023
If you need an extra layer of privacy for your emails, Gmail’s confidential mode allows you to do things like setting an expiration date for messages and adding certain restrictions for the recipient.
It’s an option that ensures the recipient of your email can’t share it with others, at least through Gmail, and it can be useful in various situations.
You can even add a password to access the email’s content for an additional layer of security.
Gmail’s confidential emails can be handy if you want to make sure recipients don’t forward or print them. It’s a native Gmail feature that also allows you to set an expiration date and even a password. Follow these steps:
Google will generate the passwords you use for the emails or send them via SMS to the number you’ve provided—this should be the recipient’s number—if that’s the security option you’ve chosen.
As for expiration, it can be anywhere from one day to 5 years, so you’ll need to choose how long you want the email to remain active. Note that you can revoke access for a recipient before the expiration date. Follow these steps to do so:
These confidential emails are protected to prevent recipients from copying their content to the clipboard, forwarding the email, or printing it, aiming to establish the highest possible security regarding them.
It’s true—and Gmail even warns about it—that it’s impossible to be 100% sure that the recipient won’t disseminate the content, as they could take a photo with a phone or even transcribe it by hand. Nevertheless, this confidential mode is a significant deterrent to its dissemination.
