Gmail to soon get end-to-end encryption: How it will work

Google has announced that it will soon upgrade its popular emailing service, Gmail to include end-to-end encryption. The feature currently remains in beta-testing and is available only for select users.

Google has announced that it will soon upgrade its popular emailing service, Gmail to include end-to-end encryption. The feature currently remains in beta-testing and is available only for Google Workspace, Education Standard, Education Plus and Enterprise Plus which means only normal education accounts.

Google has announced that users can sign up for Gmail client-side encryption until January 20, 2022.

For users, this means that user data and attachment is encrypted and shall remain unreadable to anyone outside the sender and receiver/s which means that even Google cannot access it.

This feature will ensure that the email is encrypted by the sender which can be decrypted only by the receiver on their own device.

It is important to note here that Gmail is not the first platform owned by Google to have end-to-end encryption. It is already available on Google Meet, Sheets, Slides, Docs, Google Drive and Google Calendar. Out of all of these it is only in Calendar that it is available in beta version.

Google has also clarified that it will only be the email’s body and attachments which will include images that will be encrypted. But whatever is in the header of the email including timestamps, subject and the recipient list will not be encrypted. 

Even if you have applied for the beta version of the end-to-end encryption, it is likely that it will not be available by default. To enable it, users will have to go to Admin Console and then to Security wherein they will find Access and Data Control under which you can toggle the notification of Client-side encryption. 

“In an upcoming release” as said by Google, client-side encryption will be brought to the Gmail applications in Android and iOS as well.  

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