We've been waiting for some sort of offline functionality to come to Gmail ever since Google Gears was released—it seems like the feature for which Gears was invented in the first place. And now that offline Gmail is here (and seems to work well, according to Lance Ulanoff), I have but one concern about it: Is it safe to use on a work PC?
Offline Gmail works by archiving and storing your Gmail messages locally on your machine. I'm guessing you use your freemail account the same way everyone does—for the e-mail that you don't really want stored on your corporate servers or sitting in your corporate inbox. If that's the case, storing an archive of those message on your work PC might not seem like such a great idea.
The archive is buried fairly deep in your C:\ Documents and Settings file tree. If you're using Firefox, the archive is stored here: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\74d61f9f.Default User\Google Gears for Firefox\mail.google.com. For Chrome, your messages are kept here: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Plugin Data\Google Gears\mail.google.com.
That's right, there's a different archive for each browser you use Offline Gmail with (I couldn't get Offline Gmail to archive my messages with IE8).
Naturally, every company has different I.T. policies in place, and varying levels of employee privacy. In the case of Offline Gmail, it would be extremely difficult for your I.T. department to read your archived e-mail as of right now.
The archived messages are stored in a proprietary database file type called "COM-GOOGLEMAIL#DATABASE" or "GOOGLEMAIL#DATABASE". I'm guessing your I.T. department doesn't have a tool to access the data inside the file, or the free time to build one (though such a tool may someday exist).
So your private e-mail is almost certainly private on your work PC, at least for the time being. Still, our Security Watch Contributing Editor Larry Seltzer advises taking the safe route, telling me that you have to "assume you have no privacy from your company."
"If you put it on your work machine you should assume they can and will [be able to access it]," he said. "And they should be able to. It's their computer."
Rajen Sheth, the senior product manager for Google Apps, told me that while there aren't any tools that can open the proprietary file format, the files will act just like any other files on your work PC.
"Basically, it'd be like any other file on your desktop," he said. "If your I.T. department encrypts your disc, it'd be encrypted as well."
If you're worried, Sheth suggests enabling it for your home PC and not for your work system (though it seems the work system is the one you really want offline access for, assuming it's the one you'll be traveling with and carrying on planes).
Worrywarts will also be happy to learn that Offline Gmail data isn't as sticky as some other Google Gears data. For instance, when you clear your private data in Chrome, it doesn't necessarily get deleted from Google Gears, as Security Watch recently pointed out. Sheth assured me that this isn't the case with Offline Gmail data—any time the offline feature is disabled, the archive is deleted from your machine.
Originally posted to AppScout.
source : www.pcmag.com
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