1 Topic by Johannes Pellenz

  • Johannes Pellenz
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Topic: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

Hi.

First of all, I am very happy about FireGPG. I am using gmail for most of my email conversation, but en- and decryption was the only occasion I was still using thunderbird (with the OpenPGP extension).

Anyway, I think there is a serious problem with the concept how FireGPG works within gmail: While you type your text, gmail will save the draft automatically from time to time, on its own server. This means, that
1. the mail that you are going to encryt will be sent thru the web unencrypted and
2. the mail will be stored - at least for some time - on gmails server, also unencrypted.

So far I could not find a way in gmail to disable the autosave feature.

Or does FireGPG disable the autosave functionality? Then you would be one step ahead :-)

Regards
  Johannes

  • Registered: 2007-04-05
  • Posts: 1

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

I use firegpg for signing mainly... not to hide but to prove that it is me.

  • From: Geneva
  • Registered: 2007-04-04
  • Posts: 1,040

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

The solution is easy: use gmail in https ! And for the stored on gmail server, I think you can trust them,,, (You have all your mails on they servers)

the_glu's Website

4 Reply by Johannes Pellenz

  • Johannes Pellenz
  • Guest

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

Hi.

OK, using https solves one of the problems, you are absolutely right.

But I disagree on your second point. It is not a question of trusting Google or anyone else. When I decide to encrypt my mail, then I really have my reasons for that (e.g. sending exam results or whatever). And I must be absolutely sure that _nobody_ - except the recipient - has a chance to find out about the contents of the mail. Not even some administrator at Google... And using PGP gives this possibility!

So still I think that storing the mails draft version unencrypted on Google's server is the weak point in FireGPG.

You modify the code that comes from gmail anyway, don't you? So is it possible to find out who initiates the auto save feature? Is it in the local code? Is it possible to patch the code so that autosave is disabled, e.g. if the user chooses to disable it? -> Feature request for FireGPG :-)

Yours
  Johannes

  • Registered: 2007-04-04
  • Posts: 33

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

You modify the code that comes from gmail anyway, don't you? So is it possible to find out who initiates the auto save feature? Is it in the local code? Is it possible to patch the code so that autosave is disabled, e.g. if the user chooses to disable it? -> Feature request for FireGPG :-)

Disabling auto-save is *probably* possible. We will do some tests soon...

6 Reply by Johannes Pellenz

  • Johannes Pellenz
  • Guest

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

Asher256,

that's good news, I hope this works! That would be a great feature and would make FireGPG my favorite firefox extension!

I really think that disabling auto save would improve FirePGP a lot.

Thank you very much for your answer
  Johannes

  • Registered: 2007-06-06
  • Posts: 5

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

I definitely see your complaint and one of the first things that came to my mind when I noticed that was to write the email out in abiword or openoffice or even, god forbid, ms office word. then copy over to gmail, sign, crypt and send. never leaves your computers ram in unencrypted form that way. I know its not a permanent fix but its a solid temporary work around, and you probably already have those grades in another document anyhow.

  • Registered: 2007-06-04
  • Posts: 3

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

farkus888 wrote:

I definitely see your complaint and one of the first things that came to my mind when I noticed that was to write the email out in abiword or openoffice or even, god forbid, ms office word. then copy over to gmail, sign, crypt and send. never leaves your computers ram in unencrypted form that way. I know its not a permanent fix but its a solid temporary work around, and you probably already have those grades in another document anyhow.

Why not just write it in the built-in editor, under the Right-Click Menu and copy the encrypted text into gmail when you're done?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin)

iD8DBQFGZvEkppR1ZjsrA4ERAtTvAJ4w7FeE3MaCW4NMxAOYAJRdgVjJmACdFgWO
PLfR52YG/oR3LebJPGHfvhw=
=jRIz
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

  • eean
  • New member
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  • Registered: 2007-06-06
  • Posts: 5

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

Just use something like kmail to send encrypted messages. If you google around, you can setup your mail client to use GMail's SMTP servers easily. Then messages you send still show up in your 'sent mail'.

  • From: Geneva
  • Registered: 2007-04-04
  • Posts: 1,040

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

Ok, we will look if it's possible...

the_glu's Website

  • Registered: 2007-06-07
  • Posts: 3

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

I use the firefox editus externus extension, because I like to write my stuff on my favorite editor (in my case it's vim). So when I click on the gmail's textbox and press edit my editor pops up and firefox actually gets unresponsive. I write the whole thing in the editor and then close it, so firefox starts to answer again and the text appears on the gmail textbox and I simple select it and click in "crypt and send". That way the autosave is never triggered. If you're concerned that it might happen because you took too long to crypt or whatever, you always have the option of having gpg integrated to your editor, so you crypt it before sending to gmail textbox, that way you use firegpg only to decrypt e-mails.

  • Registered: 2007-08-07
  • Posts: 4

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

the_glu wrote:

The solution is easy: use gmail in https ! And for the stored on gmail server, I think you can trust them,,, (You have all your mails on they servers)

how do i use gmail in https? i could not find a setting to do this. my login is https but everything else happens in simple http.

thank you,

--alf

  • From: Geneva
  • Registered: 2007-04-04
  • Posts: 1,040

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

Try this url : https://mail.google.com/mail/

the_glu's Website

  • Registered: 2007-08-07
  • Posts: 4

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

the_glu wrote:

Try this url : https://mail.google.com/mail/

thank you very much! it worked!

--alf

  • Registered: 2007-08-08
  • Posts: 3

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

I'm sorry for piling on, but the fact that drafts aren't encrypted is a huge deal.  This is a gaping hole, and greatly reduces the usefulness of your extension.  When I encrypt mail, I want to know that only me and my recipient can see it.  I don't trust Google any more than any other site.  Their interest is in making money; not necessarily in protecting my privacy.  And since a large part of their business model involves analyzing (reading) people's mail (Gmail), I'm not inclined to trust them very far.

I use Enigmail and Thunderbird currently to send encrypted mail via Gmail.  I've even set my girlfriend and some friends up this way.  They're not very savvy, technologically, and they prefer the Gmail web interface.  Your plugin is almost there!  If you encrypted drafts, you really would have hit on the holy grail.

Disabling drafts would be good.  If that doesn't work, how feasible would it be to encrypt drafts for yourself before they're auto-saved, and decrypt them when they're opened for editing?

16 Reply by OTI

  • OTI
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  • Registered: 2007-08-08
  • Posts: 2

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

I have been relying on fireGPG for GPG functionality and using

Gmail S/MIME:
http://www.richard.jones.name/google-ha … smime.html

to disable autosave

I am not an expert on these matters, but it seems like a practical interim solution and might give the team an interesting example.

The gmail s/mime project is also looking into encrypting the autosave drafts

Peace
John

17 Reply by OTI

  • OTI
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  • Registered: 2007-08-08
  • Posts: 2

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

Also:

http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/li … 251923.php

Better gmail can automatically send you to https://mail.google.com and pick up all mailto: links

  • Registered: 2007-08-08
  • Posts: 3

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

OTI wrote:

I have been relying on fireGPG for GPG functionality and using

Gmail S/MIME:
http://www.richard.jones.name/google-ha … smime.html

to disable autosave

I am not an expert on these matters, but it seems like a practical interim solution and might give the team an interesting example.

The gmail s/mime project is also looking into encrypting the autosave drafts

Peace
John

Very cool, thanks for the link!

Another thing for the devs: Enigmail encrypts sent messagse to you (the sender) before saving them in the Sent folder.  This means you can review sent messages, but they stay encrypted on the server or disk.  This would be a great addition as well!

  • From: Geneva
  • Registered: 2007-04-04
  • Posts: 1,040

Re: Q: Encryption useless because of gmail's draft autosave feature?

> Another thing for the devs: Enigmail encrypts sent messagse to you (the sender) before saving them in the Sent folder.  This means you can review > sent messages, but they stay encrypted on the server or disk.  This would be a great addition as well!

I thnik you know it's a web application, and we can't do what we wants, like this. But here, you can encrypt your mail to you too, and the problem is solved.

For disabling auto-save, ok. But we can only disable them (it's a web[...]). Will come with a next relase, but it's of course not our priority...

the_glu's Website