The takeaway? Don't use standard e-mail (gmail or otherwise) for anything that needs guaranteed privacy. Once you send an e-mail, it is not within your control

The takeaway? Don't use standard e-mail (gmail or otherwise) for anything that needs guaranteed privacy. Once you send an e-mail, it is not within your control what happens to it or who sees it. That's why, for example, in healthcare -- messages are commonly wrapped in secure message "containers". The e-mail simply has a link that takes you to a third party where the actual message is stored, encrypted, has an expiration date, and you must authenticate to view it. Convenient? No. But privacy always comes at a cost of some sort.