5 Simple Ways to Make Your Gmail Inbox Safer - WIRED

Under the hood, Gmail has a number of options and features to make us safer from scammers, safer from advertisers, and safer in regard to keeping your emails private and confidential.

It's not meant to stop emails from the same sender reaching you (though it might), but it does help train Gmail's spam filters using the content and characteristics of the email.

You're then able to set a series of actions that are always applied to incoming messages from this sender or that match the filter terms—those actions might include marking the email as read, marking it as unimportant, sending it to the Spam folder, or deleting it completely.

Gmail comes with an Undo Send feature that enables you to recall a dispatched email before it reaches its recipients, if you're quick enough—it works by delaying the sending of the email for a few seconds, so you can click Undo if you notice a typo or the wrong contact in the To field.

By default the Undo Send window is set at 10 seconds, but you can increase this to 20 or even 30 seconds to give yourself more time to think "Did I really mean to say that?" Simply click the cog icon in the top right corner of the main Gmail interface, then Settings, then open the General tab and the Undo Send drop-down menu.

Gmail's recently added Confidential mode is a more secure method of email delivery—the recipient(s) can't copy, forward, print or download the message, you can set it to expire after a certain time, and you can even protect access with a passcode (just in case the inbox you're sending it to has been compromised).

A few caveats to these self-destructing, super-secure messages: If the people getting these emails aren't using the official Gmail apps, they'll need to open the messages up on the web instead.

Also, bear in mind that there's nothing to stop your contacts taking screenshots of confidential messages and then passing on those images, so the mode is best used for people you trust.

Small image embeds called tracking pixels can be used by email senders to tell if you've opened the messages they've sent, when you opened them, and what kind of device you opened them on.

Now, Gmail does do some automatic email scanning, looking out for images that are being used irresponsibly.

Google says "if Gmail thinks a sender or message is suspicious, images aren't shown and you'll be asked if you want to see the images".