Google adds new email security to beat snoops

Google this week introduced another tool to foil  the NSA's snoops, a new Chrome add-on called End-to-End, which keeps users' data safe from prying eyes.

The tool would be highly appreciated by users for whom the new Gmail encryption is not enough, as Google says End-to-End encryption keeps the data leaving the user's browser encrypted until it was decoded by the intended recipient.

End-to-end encryption tools are not new, though they require a certain degree of tech savviness; Google security and privacy product manager Stephan Somogyi says it needs, "a great deal of technical know-how and manual effort".

The web giant on Tuesday released the source code for its new Chrome add-on, hoping savvy users would test and evaluate the program ahead of its public debut, with financial rewards offered to those who indentified security bugs in the code.

Once Google was satisfied that the extension was ready for primetime, End-to-End would feature on the Chrome Web Store, allowing the even lesser technically apt to send and receive end-to-end encrypted emails.

The extension is likely to make it much more difficult for the government and other intelligence agencies to snoop on the encrypted emails since decoding PGP [Pretty Good Privacy] data encryption and decryption requires technical prowess and is labour-intensive.

Though the tool does not entirely block an outsider from viewing someone's message, it forces them to directly hack into a computer rather than grabbing the email while in passage, according to the Times.

''We recognize that this sort of encryption will probably only be used for very sensitive messages or by those who need added protection,'' Somogyi wrote in a Google blog post. ''But we hope that the End-to-End extension will make it quicker and easier for people to get that extra layer of security should they need it.''

In a separate development the company relased a Transparency Report update on Tuesday, which divulged which email providers did not encrypt the webmail of users.

According to the report 40 to 50 per cent of messages sent between Gmail and other companies' email products were not encrypted.