How to Use Confidential Mode in Gmail

With 1.8 billion reported active users, Gmail ranks high as one of the world’s leading email platforms. Nearly 300 billion emails are sent and received by individuals worldwide, with 27% of emails sent to or from a Gmail account each day. While Gmail offers industry-standard 128-bit encryption for email security, it’s good to add another layer. is the idea. .

You can use Bcc mode in Gmail to prevent an email from being printed, downloaded, copied or forwarded. You can even set the email expiration date – from one day to five years. After this time, the email expires or becomes unavailable. Here’s how it works:

Enabling Confidential Mode in Outgoing Email

You can enable Confidential Mode when composing an email in Gmail. The following steps will provide the direction you need:

Stage 1: Start Gmail in a web browser.

Step 2: Click Compose to compose a new email or click an email in your Inbox and click Reply.

Stage 3: You should see a list of icons next to the Send button at the bottom of the New Message window. Click on the icon with a clock and lock that represents the Incognito Mode feature.

Step 4: In the Incognito Mode dialog, you should see a list of options. If you want to put an expiration date on the mail, click the dropdown box under Set Expiry Date.

Step 5: Select your desired expiration date from the list – one day, one week, one month, three months and five years. There is no way to customize the expiration date beyond the available options.

Step 6: Check the box for Set Expiry for Require Password. This option is usually set to no SMS password by default, but you can click on the SMS password if you want the recipient to receive a password. Google generates all passwords for this function.

You can use this to add an authentication to the email and make sure only the intended recipient can access and view it.

Step 7: After fixing all the above settings, click on Save at the bottom right of the popup to apply the settings.

You can choose Set Expiry, Require Password, or combine both options.

Step 8: If you selected the SMS password option, you should see the Confirm phone numbers box after clicking Send. Click the small flag icon to open a drop-down list to select the recipient’s country code. At the time of writing, only phone numbers from certain countries support this feature.

Step 9: Type the recipient’s number in the box next to the flag and click Submit.

After saving the settings, you will see a notification about Incognito Mode in the email. The notification will carry the expiration date of your email, if set.

Remove Early Access for Private Gmail

Once Incognito Mode is enabled and sent in an email, users cannot disable it. However, senders can still control whether email recipients get early access to email. That is, whether email recipients can view the content of the email before its expiration date. Here’s how it works:

Stage 1: Open Gmail in a web browser.

Step 2: Click Sent on the left side of your Gmail window.

Stage 3: Start the sent email with Incognito Mode.

Step 4: Click Remove access in the body of the email and email recipients will not be able to access its content.

Step 5: Click Renew access to grant access before the email expires.

Accessing a Private Email as a Recipient

As the recipient of a confidential email from Gmail, you can only access that email until the expiration date or if you can provide the password. E-mail recipients cannot copy, forward, or print e-mail content. Here’s how it works:

Stage 1: Open Gmail in a web browser.

Step 2: Click Inbox at the top left.

Stage 3: When you start the email with Incognito Mode, you should be able to see its contents.

Step 4: If the email has a password lock, click Send password.

Step 5: Check your phone for the code, enter the password in the body of the email and press Submit.

Encrypting Outgoing Emails from Gmail

That’s it for how to enable Confidential Mode in Gmail. If you are still concerned about the privacy of emails you send from Gmail, you can also try encrypting emails using the SafeGmail extension.