Incognito is a useful feature. E2E encryption is a useful feature.
There's no reason to only allow those two features to be used together. You could have them both turned off by default, and have three modes, one which turns on E2E and one which turns on incognito.
Also, the incognito decision should be made by each side independently. Just because I want to delete my traces doesn't mean my partner does.
If one side enabled this "use E2E encryption for everything" feature, then the other side would presumably no longer have access to any of the smart assistant features. And it would not be obvious why.
Additionally, it would be hard to explain why you'd ever want to enable such a feature which means nobody would do it. I suspect you want default E2E encryption for political reasons. Such things don't work unless it's on by default.
I see. In that case, yes it'd make sense to have such a feature, probably implemented as an archive button in the incognito window (with a warning that archiving such a chat makes it non-private).
For Google privacy is a problem, since they want as much data they can get. So they've put in "incognito" so it sounds modern enough what competitors have with E2E, but they'll try and make it inconvenient and not default as much as they can.
Of course they won't be open about this, because they're making the world a better place <insertcuteemojihere>
Wanting an E2E chat that stays on my device when I'm done should be fine.
Only if all other participants in that chat are fine with it. So you'd end up with an implementation that only allows saving to disk if all parties allow saving. That's a lot more complexity than simply a separate checkbox.
I still agree with you, there is value in allowing the features to be controlled separately.
Why? I could always screenshot it, there's never a guarantee when you send information that it won't be retained by others with access. Letting me keep it without screenshotting is just a local convenience feature.
Sure, you could screenshot it. You can make a screencast too. But that would be your choice and your effort, not the tool's. There is a difference between a conversation partner that spends effort to violate the (possibly implicit) rules for that conversation, and a conversational tool that encourages subversion without effort.
In other words, it would be bad for Whisper to allow saving confidential conversations for two reasons:
- the user chooses to not save the conversation, but can't be sure if other partners save it regardless
- the user chooses to save the conversation, but can't be sure if the tool will really do so because of other partners' choices
Either of the options above will lead to more end-user questions (and necessary UI to prevent those) than simply combining E2E and persistence in one option.
I think this is a terminology issue - from what's been said elsewhere the only two differences in incognito mode is that it is E2E and doesn't show messages on your lockscreen.
It's not ephemeral messaging like Snapchat or something, although they are discussing it as a future feature.
>All chats will be encrypted, but a special incognito mode will have an end-to-end encryption, and expiring chats that are permanently deleted once you leave them.
I don't mind the two being used together. I've been using OTR in Gtalk/Hangouts for a long time, too (yes, I know Google actually keeps those messages anyway).
However, I would like an option to make the Incognito mode the default (always-on), just like Firefox can make Private Mode the default.
If Google wants people to believe it cares about their privacy (which is probably the reason they're even doing this in the first place), then it should not just offer the feature to them in an obscure way, but it should make it easy for them to use it if that's what they want.
There's no reason to only allow those two features to be used together. You could have them both turned off by default, and have three modes, one which turns on E2E and one which turns on incognito.
Also, the incognito decision should be made by each side independently. Just because I want to delete my traces doesn't mean my partner does.