End-To-End Email Encryption Tool Under Google Launching Soon, Secure Your Emails Better
Google's next big project appears to be securing emails further with an end-to-end encryption tool. The upcoming tool will allow people to encrypt their emails either through Google or a plug in. Yahoo has reportedly taken part in it already with other vendors expected to join soon for more collaborative concept.
Google's "End-to-End" tool is not up yet for the big release but it has been moved to GitHub. This should attract a series of developers to examine the tool and ensure its safety. Google also provided more information on how it intends the system to function.
According to the document published on Github, Google's approach to the End-to-End tool follows a similar framework under the Certificate Transparency. Google further notes that the system allows email messages to serve as gossip protocol. People can ensure that centralized authorities are honest.
Tech Crunch emphasized that the new email encryption tool remains as a working progress. Encryption remains a very complicated process. In fact, the team behind the tool highlighted this in the document: "This requires a significant amount of work by the user, and is a hard concept to grasp for average users."
Under Google's approach, the system is more centralized. This means public keys of users will be registered automatically under the server. The key will also be published through the directory. Once a user wishes to send an encrypted email, the system can verify the key directory, find the right key then secure the message. Despite the still complicated process, Google's method attempts to remove at least one level of complexity from it.
It appears the tool will be available as a plug-in offering access to other web applications. This is ideal according to Tech Crunch because it means that the support will be available for other platforms as well. It will not be available exclusive to Google which makes it ideally versatile. Yahoo has reportedly been contributing to the system already. This opens up possibilities of other major vendors participating in Google's initiative as well.
The tech giant will not be ready for release until it has addressed all of the key distribution usability problems. The nearest launch to expect will be around in 2015.