Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
Google uses TLS (what is called standard encryption) to keep your emails relatively safe in transit. (The service does also have the more secure S/MIME encryption, but it’s only available for business and educational institutions.) There are, however, other ways you can keep your personal data a little safer, and one is by using Google’s confidential mode.
Google introduced its confidential mode for Gmail in 2018. The setting allows people to send messages that can expire and prevents recipients from copying their contents, forwarding them to others, or downloading them.
You can use confidential mode on a desktop or through the Gmail app on mobile, though whichever you use, you’ll need to activate confidential mode each time you send a…