14 DAY TRIAL // Rumors that Google has been working on a way to help everyone encrypt their messages have been going on for months, but the tool is finally here, even though it needs a bit more testing before everyone can install it.
“End-to-end” offers, as the name suggests, end-to-end encryption, which means that data leaving your browser will be encrypted until the message’s intended recipient decrypts it. Similarly, encrypted messages that you receive will remain that way until you decrypt them in your browser.
That’s not to say that Gmail is not secure, but this new tool is just another way of Google providing users with a solution to be even safer when they communicate, especially considering the entire NSA scandal and the implications of having Big Brother collecting data in bulk. In fact, Google’s email service has supported HTTPS since its launch and this became the default option a while back.
Of course, encryption tools like PGP and GnuPG have been around for a long time, but they’re mainly used by people who know their way around such tools, who actually possess the technical know-how, which pretty much rules out the average Internet user.
Google hopes that through “End-to-End,” the entire thing will go smoother and that everyone will be able to encrypt their emails without having to jump through hoops and read lengthy tutorials.
But before the Chrome extension is ready for use, Google has released the code that uses OpenPGP, an open standard supported by many encryption tools already on the market. The company wants to make sure that it’s as safe as it needs to be before people actually starting relying on it and it’s asking experts to take a look and find security bugs.
To that end, the Internet giant has added “End-to-End” to its Vulnerability Reward Program, which means that anyone who will locate any issues will likely be rewarded, based on the usual system that Google has set in place.
“Once we feel that the extension is ready for primetime, we’ll make it available in the Chrome Web Store, and anyone will be able to use it to send and receive end-to-end encrypted emails through their existing web-based email provider,” Google wrote.
The company is aware that this isn’t something that people will use constantly, and that it will be reserved for sensitive messages or by users who need extra protection. “But we hope that ‘End-to-End’ extension will make it quicker and easier for people to get that extra layer of security should they need it,” it added.
The regular layer of encryption used by many companies, including Google, Yahoo and others should help protect people’s privacy from bulk data collection, Cryptographer Bruce Schneier told Softpedia, but it won’t help much if the NSA chooses to target a specific person. “End-to-End” should be of more use to this end.