This is an excellent analysis and reminds us that we need to think of the whole network when we think about privacy. The post singles out Google, but of course it also applies to Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. The same goes for SMS and any other communication. When you press Send you give up control.
Originally shared by Abraham Williams
http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours
Did it leave your computer without being encrypted by the recipient’s private key? (which hopefully hasn’t leaked!) No? Then it’s game over man, game over. . If it did, your chances are better, but not assured. Even if we’re doing it right, we can only encrypt the payload, the fact that I emailed you at $timestamp isn’t hideable in any RFC compliant email system. We need a time machine to actually secure email.
And upon review, my rhetorical answer should have been “yes” to lead to the game over result. Conditional logic mistakes are easy to make.