Gmail Confidential Mode in Business

Gmail Confidential Mode in Business

What is G-mail Confidential Mode

Recipients of messages in G-mail Confidential Mode don't have the option to forward, copy, print, or download messages, including attachments. Senders can set a message expiration date, revoke message access at any time in the future, and require an SMS verification code to access messages.

Possible Implications for Business

If you are a business that relies upon email for business communications including discussions with clients, vendors, and third parties about business activities, and if you rely upon those email messages being a permanent record of what was discussed, what was agreed to, what notifications and approvals were received, etc., then ask yourself the following question:

  1. Would it impact your business to have those email messages disappear after-the-fact?

If the sender of those business messages used G-mail Confidential Mode and had an expiry date on the message, or at some point in the future if they changed their mind and then revoked the previous email conversation that documented what was discussed, agreed to and approved, and you had relied upon that discussion content and emailed decisions and approvals in your business processes... Would that impact you? And if that sender then claimed that they had not said, decided, or approved what had been documented in the now-revoked email message, what proof do you have that they said what they said?

Remember, recipients cannot forward, copy, print, or download these messages.

It's up to each business to decide if they want to send and/or receive messages in G-mail Confidential Mode.

Can You Disable It?

Google allows G Suite administrators to disable Confidential Mode for your entire domain name. It needs to be disabled in two places as follows:

  1. You can disable the sending of outgoing messages for all users on your domain by going to the Google Admin console, Apps > G Suite > Gmail: User settings: Enable confidential mode (see Google help article for details, section: "Disable or enable Gmail confidential mode")
  2. You can create a compliance rule to reject incoming messages that are in G-mail Confidential Mode (see Google help article for details, section: "Create a compliance rule to block incoming messages")

Google Help Article regarding G-mail Compliance Mode: https://support.google.com/a/answer/7684332

If your organization has the legacy free Google Apps Gmail, then you will not be able to create the compliance rule for incoming messages (Google has only made compliance rules available for G Suite Basic and higher plans). You can disable this mode for outgoing messages.