Even with the first, Google supports forwarding all mail to an arbitrary email address, which means the "Gmail" becomes a text-file stored on a dovecot server (or other regular mail server) somewhere.
So unless they break delivery (you can forward only some subset of emails) - there's no way for the sender to have any better guarantee than "please delete after reading".
At least the pgp spec has (had?) an "eyes only" flag that, while it didn't guarantee anything, at least meant compliant software would try hard to not leave a plain text copy on the filesystem.
Why break delivery when you can break sending?
just store the contents locally, and replace the body with some URL that the user has to click..
then, when non-gmail users have been desensitized to clicking links in emails 'because gmail', and get viruses constantly, sell them gmail as a way to have email without risk of viruses.
win win!
Yes, there is a flag that means "for your eyes only", see RFC [0] and GPG esoteric options [1].
[0]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4880#section-5.9
[1]: https://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/GPG-Esoter...
I’m organizing mail sent to me. 10k text files. The last thing I want is to debug why search isn’t finding the message because some vendor 4 years ago flagged their invoice with an expiration date.
This is not a function that as a receiver of email I want. So they can make a new protocol that I don’t use instead of overloading email.
Also, it’s a bit scary for some of the slippery slope possibilities. Will my filesystem do the same? The last thing I want is DRM checking every file.
Stuff on my machines is my data. If you don’t want me to have it, don’t send it to me. Etc etc.
You receive and email. You assume that it’ll get stored in your inbox forever.
I almost want to say it’s a bug, not a feature. And I’m pretty open to software changes even if it’s a pain to get used to. But changing something as fundamental as the nature of emails in this regard gives rise to something other than an email.
Mind you, this is a better case than for Gmail users who will probably see the content inline with their mail, only for it to disappear later.
So why would I believe Google now?
The biggest benefit of this is removing the email from archives, so weeks, months, or years later if the account gets compromised the gains are lower. For example an email with the subject "HIV Test Results" has a far different value with and without a body included.
A more down-to-earth example is I just sent my wife a W-2 via email for our taxes. I asked her to delete the email after downloading the document. But instead I could have just set an expiration on the contents and poof it is gone.