Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Ballmer: Google Reads Your Mail
Anonymous writes "A piece of video has emerged in which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says of Google, 'they read your mail and we don't.' Evidently, it was part of a lengthy discussion on the future of the software business model, and whether advertising could support free consumer software. Ballmer said it doesn't work, at least when it comes to email. '"That's just a factual statement, not even to be pejorative. The theory was if we read your mail, if somebody read your mail, they would know what to talk to you about. It's not working out as brilliantly as the concept was laid out." Ballmer isn't the first to fire salvos at Google's Gmail privacy policy. Privacy advocates have been critical over the policy almost since the beginning, but the popularity of the service has skyrocketed nonetheless.'"
Yes, Google "reads" your email in order to serve up context-sensitive advertisements. Microsoft also "reads" your email because if they didn't read your email, they wouldn't be able to transmit it to your browser to be displayed on-screen. That Microsoft chooses to read your email but still serves up irrelevant, obtrusive advertisements is their problem.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Actually, I don't think they "read" the mail. Yes, they have some program that "scans" your mails and indexes it in some way, and then , it shows you the ads if they find some key words. Technically, they are scanning your mail, but a program cannot "read" (ie. process and "understand" the writing). So is it a violation of privacy? May be... this is a border line case.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
It's official... Google reads your email! Be afraid! Be VERY afraid! It must be true, because Steve Ballmer of Microsoft says so, and we all know how decent Steve is!
Ahem.
Excuse me, I got carried away here for just a second.
By the way, if you don't want anyone to read your email, don't use gmail, hotmail or yahoo mail... But do use GPG and a local email client, other than Outlook... mmmmmkay?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Google has scripts reading your email: no one forces you to use Gmail. Microsoft produces an operating system to which they give US government agencies secret access: there is generally no legal requirement to use Windows, but it's darn hard to avoid it.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
To watch the said video, you'll need to sign up for a mydeo account, which is apparently not free, but a 31 day limited trial.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Microsoft and Google have been gearing up for a major war over software as a service and web-based applications, with Google offering Gmail and Google docs, and Microsoft offering Hotmail, Office and preparing for Windows Live Office.
it's just the last sentence and it contains every justification of mixing up the verbs "to read" and "to process". reading is something done by humans, not some word-sensitive processing for freaking advertisements. everyone a bit tech-savvy knows about googles somehow strange interpretation of privacy - so: if you don't like it, don't ******* use it.
Your honesty as a corporate leader shines us all.
I quite like contextual adds. My Inbox is full of Coyotos and Hurd related emails, so I get to have a good chuckle every time I get advertisements for Minix 3. Nice try Andy.
And what is with the gasps? If you have sensitive mail, you need to be using pop3 and encrypting it. That's just common sense.
We at slashdot are scientists, specialists and kernel hackers. Your FUD will be found out.
The video mentioned in TFS is, of course, a fake. The actual quote was this: Ballmer: [...] they read your mail and we don't, but our Developers, Developers, Developers are working on that! Developers, Developers, Developers...
After a few minutes of his "developers" chant, Ballmer was reported as throwing chairs at every googly seeming person in the room.
did he not get the memo from?
"m$ and google and are evil"
oh wait...
Ok, so Google's Gmail "reads" my emails. So what?!
1. Email is transmitted in plain text anyways... so anyone can read it.
2. My machine could be compromised. Someone could use a keylogger or other method to capture my keystrokes and read what would be my email.
3. I could run my own mail server and read my user's mail.
To combat 1 and 3, I could use PGP or GNUpg (or some other means, for that matter) and encrypt my mail. Privided that I distribute my keys via key server or some other non-mail related means, no one (ok, maybe the NSA...) except people I choose can read my sent email.
Email isn't a secure medium. Get over it.
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
I for one salute our new Google overlords!
*hurls seating device*
Google has a relatively good reputation when it comes to privacy. Primarily, while they may provide aggregated data and statistics, they do not pass my personal data on to 3rd parties (e.g. advertisers or the government). Gmail produces context sensitive (and often humorous) ads while hotmail produces annoying flashing banners. Moreover, Microsoft has a poor record when it comes to protecting my privacy (e.g. WGA, DRM with Vista).
I think the correct term could be "analyze".
This whole current Dot Com boom is based on the assumption that Google had found a way to supply relevant ads to all the page views out there. If this assumption is wrong (and lets face it, when as the last time you clicked on a google ad) then we have some pretty shakey foundations out there.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
(ie pass it through software which matches up tokens against a database containing other tokens) .. then how do they filter out spam?
I have been using Gmail since 2004, and am glad to say I haven't deleted an email (other than spam) yet. It is understandable that there are privacy concerns with this type of archival of personal data. Personally, I think that the benefits outweigh the potential risks. I don't discuss anything too private over email or the internet for that matter because of the fact that it is less personal. The ease of having all my multiple personal, work, and school email addresses forward to one globally accessible inbox is just worth it to me.
Lets be honest here, this is MICROSOFT we are talking about here warning us that Google doesn't respect our privacy. Well they should know shouldn't they? The creators of the least secure OS ever made, the OS that updates itself when we don't want it too, that has a EULA that gives MS the right to snoop around on your system, read whatever it wants and alter whatever it wants and if it destroys anything, too bad. The OS that has been known to phone home until someone found out and then they disable it saying that they couldn't identify you from just your IP and credit card number and every other bit of personal information they could find.
Sure google reads your gmail, we know this. It is how it works, they are very clear about it and if you don't like it, don't use it. It is not like google has a monopoly or anything they have been found guilty of abusing on several continents, that forces you to use their services.
Sometimes I think MS needs to hire a person to increase their public relations. The task would not be complex. He just stands next to the microphone at MS press-release center, and whenever an MS employee walks up to it, he zaps them.
Or put more simple? MS if you want to improve your image, SHUT UP. Do NOT say a single thing for the next year and your image will go through the roof, because you just keep saying these insane things that everyone with a brain can see for the complete and utter lying bullshit it really is.
FUD only works when you got a shred of believability left. If Steve Ballmer proclaimed that the sky was blue, I would doubt that.
What next, Bush calling Blair a bit of thicky who lied to his voters about Iraq? Britney Spears calling the Spice Girls a bad act? Germany commenting on the US tendency to start wars?
Really, MS needs to hire a public relation officer who knows that less is more. The only thing Steve Ballmer should be allowed to say in a year is, Hi, these are the profit figures for last year. Thank you, goodbye.
I wonder if the shareholders can demand he keeps his mouth shut because he is damaging the value of the company.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Didn't Hotmail have some brouhaha awhile back where the fine detail of the EULA basically said they OWNED any email/IP that went through their service?
Maybe I'm just delusional again...
In Soviet Russia E-mail reads your Ballmer
Just encrypt the real mails with GPG and it won't matter if they "read" it.
Just force everyone else to use it aswell.
...all anti-spam software is reading your mail. Yes, even Microsoft's.
Yeah, Ballmer also thinks Eric Schmidt is a 'fucking pussy'. Mr Ballmer: in Soviet Russia sweat patches YOU!
I would add that virtually every email service provide already reads your emails... how does Balmer think anti-spam technogologies work ? Duh ! (Notable exception: greylisting.)
Mmmh, using ESP instead of ISP?
> It's not working out as brilliantly as the concept was laid out.
If I were a HotMail user, I'd start packing up.
... then how do they filter out spam?
I don't think they do. Hotmail's spam filtering is absolute shit.
I'd like to tell Mr. Ballmer that this is so not true
and....THUD!!!!!!!
**HIT BY A CHAIR, FALLS TO GROUND GROANING IN PAIN**
Ballmer: And you were sayin?
I hate people who quote out of context. At least be complete.
...have to because we know everything we want to know about you through the phoning home of our OS.
they read your mail and we don't
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Stave Ballmer sometimes have trouble expressing himself verbally, so here is what he meant to say: "The algorithms that reads your mail on a gmail acoount are more advanced than the algorithms that reads your mail on a hotmail account."
Which is true, so no reason to get angry at him.
Atleast they don't delete my mail like Hotmail did after 7 years of usage and not logging in via their webinterface for 30 days.
the only plausible explanation is that Ballmer can't read, I guess...
To: eric.schmidt@msn.com
Re: Reading user's gmail
Eric,
Sounds like a great idea.
S.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
when looking for hotel booking agents in asia, and I did book as well since they were cheap and no taxes, where as a direct hotel booking incurred their local GST + 'service tax' of 10%.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
This is like a ginormous soot-stained, pitted, dented and immobile pot which has been simmering for the last twenty-five years calling the nearby, newish and rapidly expanding kettle made from stainless steel which is now somewhat more rusty than it was in 1998, black.
BTW Google reads your slashdot comments too.
I was thinking 'filter out viruses', but spam works as well. The answer is that all email providers 'read' your mail in this respect, but only Google displays ads based on the content. (That I know of.)
Do I care? Not a whit. As far as I know, the information gleaned from the 'read' isn't stored anywhere after the page is loaded (IE: it's only ever in RAM) and no human ever does the reading. If either of those things were happening, I'd care.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Last I checked: Hotmail has a spam filter. It also has a junk mail folder.
I assume it isn't psychic and somewhere down the line, a bot reads the mail's content, matches it in both a baysian and literal way and makes a decision as to whether the mail was unsolicited.
Gmail reads the mail, does the same, but also sends keywords to an adbot.
Both read your mail Ballmer, you twit.
The only difference is you guys weren't smart enough to attach the spam bot to the ad bot.
Create a page on a non US server not associated with you. Make sure the page is buried and unlinked. Get a friend to send you an email with that page in it, hotmail included. Check the apache logs.
Ballmer's job is to serve FUD to those who read Forbes Magazine for the articles, and he's done it again. He plants seeds of doubt in the minds of people who probably have their emails printed out for them, and can't tell the difference between Gmail, Hotmail or the corporate Lotus Notes system that's rapidly coming to the end of its life. The sysadmins will shortly recommend dumping Notes for a system based on Zimbra, but as the CEO goes to sign it off at a tenth of the price of an equivalent MS Exchange system, he notices in the high level description that it supports Gmail... wait, isn't that a bad thing? The proposal is rejected and the CEO's doubt sets in motion the installation of a shiny new Exchange system, and Microsoft take another scalp thanks to Speaks To CEOs' ramblings.
Easy! They simply block all email from being able to reach your inbox.
Spam filters "read" your email so don't use them.
Your Vista reads your mail! It knows all about you.
Vista reads your passwords! Did they tell you?
Also Internet Explorer knows your bank account and credit card number! Check your swap/cache often enough...
Who can you trust?
Mostly good points, but, still:
This is a line that Microsoft up to now has refused to cross.
A pretty important line, in my book.
Now, my backup email account is with Hotmail due to it being in existence far before Gmail and of course inertia, but this is one thing that does not encourage me to change that.
"When you register for certain Microsoft services, we will ask you to provide personal information. The information we collect may be combined with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies. We use cookies and other technologies to keep track of your interactions with our sites and services to offer a personalised experience" http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx
davecb5620@gmail.com
They already have a finger in your ..... doh ... nevermind !
Though I'm a little skeptical about his motives Ballmer is doing some good here. Of course it won't get past the MS is bad crowd on slashdot but, if it gets enough coverage, it may make people think about what they trust these email systems with.
I've run my own e-mail since the early '90s and see no reason to want to change now. I view these systems as similar to routing all of your snail mail through a third party that opens it, analyzes it, delivers it. They also sign you up to a bunch of mailing lists for products that relate to the things in your post and selling off any statistical information they can get.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
... as long as they don't make sleeping pills out of it and don't share the profits with me!
So say we all
Google has openly fought against the US governments ability to read your email. That is they only allow the feds into read YOUR email IFF they have a warrent on you. MS AND yahoo actually allowed the feds in during W's illegal action. In addition, in China, both MS and Yahoo cooperate with the chinese gov. in giving up email. Google has cooperated with the Chinese gov, but nowhere near what MS and Yahoo do. Just like in America, they do not give chinese gov. carte Blanche ability to read the emails.
For the naysayers, here is simple proof. When the feds went after the search engines, where did it become public? Only the ones that fought against them. The ones that cooperated were kept quiet. And yes, ALL of the majors were expected to cooperate. Only Google fought it.
Looks like somebody forgot about personal information read through the WGA, machines forced to upgrade then reboot (last year) and others where the updates are forced even if the user turns them off (this summer), all situations where the user has zero control over what's being done on his systems and his data.
Yes, Google reads your email like every mail service provider would do if a government said so, and the US Govt. probably said so, but that doesn't make Microsoft more trustworthy, especially given their history.
Back in the day when networks were all wired, and mail servers were all on the premises, and computers had 80286 CPUs, it might have made sense for mail to be sent and stored in cleartext. Nowadays, storing mail and documents that way, and sending them over unprotected WiFi access points, is a huge privacy and security hole. It's a bit shocking that not even open source mail clients and servers still, by default, don't secure payload with encryption.
As for Webmail, Web-based backup services could not even be sold without encrypting payload. How is it that lack of encryption is still acceptable in Webmail?
I wrote parts of this stuff
> It is how it works, they are very clear about it
> and if you don't like it, don't use it.
I don't use Google Mail, I never shall, and I always strip
Google Mail users from replies.
However, when I send an e-mail to a list there may be recipients
who use Google Mail. I did not agree to Google's T&Cs yet
they still get to run their heuristics against the content of
the e-mail that I sent and by so doing generate data which they
then use to enrich themselves.
I valued privacy greatly. When I get an email from someone who has a Gmail address, the thing that goes through my mind is 'What a fool'. This is sort of contrary to my original impressions of the product, back when they first introduce it and you had to be invited. Back then like everyone else I was all hot to get my Gmail account, and was worried that I wouldn't be able to get the one I wanted. I did get my account soon enough, but when I found out they were scanning email I stopped using it. Now, I don't even remember what account name I got or the password.
Of course, I am regarded as a privacy nut. I don't shop at stores that have loyalty cards nor do I have any credit cards. And I post anonymously.
My yahoo email will receive anything from hotmail. I always figured that yahoo was filtering. Maybe it's because hotmail won't send to yahoo?
This tactic is an effective one for the FUDers becasue they can count on the general citezenry beign too stupid to comprehend the difference between an algorithm that sifts large quantiies of data looking for patterns and some guy in a black suit personally perusing your mail.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Those poor mail readers at Google don't get paid enough...
My word!!! Could you imagine the boredom?
Hope is the currency of fools
Mr. Ballmer, those who dwell in glass houses should not throw stones. Or chairs.
MacBook Pro. Worst name since the Bicycle
Of course, according to the terms of service, your mail is their mail.
At least it used to be, I haven't read their latest TOS.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
But we ( Microsoft ) read everythign else on your pc. And we see that license key for works 2.0 is invalid so we are going to disable it for you " for your protection, since you need to upgrade anyway".
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Aren't you all forgetting something? On many sites, if you forget a password, the particular site sends your password to your GMail account. Google parses your *PASSWORDS* and sells your *PASSWORDS* to other companies. I cannot stress this enough. This should be your main concern and is exactly why I do not use it.
The thing is, hearing Microsoft criticising another company's business practices vis a vis privacy is singularly jarring. Remember, this is the company who just recently forced users of their software to install a patch, whether they said "No" or not. And then didn't want to tell those users about it.
It is perfectly acceptable to agree with concerns about a company's activities, but question the motives of those making the objections. It's like a murderer criticising a drug dealer - it seems the murderer is trying to make himself look better in comparison.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Ballmer said it doesn't work, at least when it comes to email. ... but the popularity of the service has skyrocketed nonetheless.
When you see your competitor succeeding, and you call their success a failure, you just make yourself look like an idiot.
*watches for flying chairs*
It's not that we love Google reading our mail, it's that we just don't like you.
Sincerely,
The Internet
I like music
They call out the fact that they'll be using context-sensitive ads fairly often, and I (and others) signed up for it nonetheless. My privacy can't be violated if I've already consented to see some ads in exchange for free e-mail/storage hosting. I have other options if I don't like it.
Now, can a person who e-mails ME complain about a privacy violation? That's a bit more of an interesting question, and it depends on the level of tin-foil-hattery.
I actually use every other goggle service, but I refuse to use gmail except as a spam catcher account.
Think Deeply.
When Brian Reid "left" google (he was director or vp of ops) he stopped using gmail for exactly this reason.
If you rely on the fact google doesn't read your mail you might be disappointed.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Oh my God! A company that's providing a free service is somehow using it to enrich themselves! Call the police!
In order to do SPAM analysis anyway?
If Hotmail checks your incoming email for spam and viruses, then aren't they "reading" your mail just as Google does? Google has a computerized parser that looks at the context of your email and displays relevant ads. Hotmail has a computerized parser that looks at the context of your email and discards it if it's "bad". That seems like the same kind of reading to me.
1. Who put up a huge fight when the government asserted its unconstitutional "patriot" act?
2. Who let big brother right in to your email?
(answers - 1: Google; 2: Microsoft)
Microsoft is betting on stupid people that think e-mail is private. They are using that lie to make you afraid of Google taking that fake privacy away. E-mail is never private. If it must be private use some other means or use encryption - the electronic equivalent of an envelope!
This CEO saying their company doesn't read your make makes about as much sense as the postal carrier promising not to look at the picture on your postcard - who the hell cares.
Signed,
The one who reads your email.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have no problem with google knowing absolutely everything about me... as long as they let me search it all. :)
just use outlook 2 access gmail!
heh.
seriously, i do!
for one thing, gmail is v. v. stupid about keyboard shortcuts. i have actually written to them to ask them to set up a setting that would allow users to select one of several basic email clients' shortcuts systems, in preferences. No reply, of course.
nonetheless.
lots of people have skillsets (from lappies, etc) that are built around keyboard shortcuts. Mine is all about Outlook. So, ez enough. I access gmail via my outlook. no ads, no bs, keyboard shortcuts work as they should.
w00t
Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.
That's their business model, offering you a free service supported by relevant ads defined by minining your habits, they are very transparent about this. It's in their TOS, if you don't agree with that, you shouldn't have accepted it in the frist place.
I still trust them more than MS.
MS doesn't read the mail? Who knows. Most of the mail that is sent to hotmail accounts never ends up in the inbox, so who knows what's happened to it? I know for a fact that the mail servers 250'd the mail, I have the logs, but it's never got to the end users accounts, I know for a fact, as the mail was sent to a brand new account. Totally stupid. Someone, please, please, give me a contact name at hotmail's postmaster department so that I can try and get to the bottom of this. It's been going on for years. Apx. 90% of mail with attachments to hotmail accounts gets dropped.
Why UNIX?
And so much more...
You to can enjoy the privacy you can expect from the TFH email. Act now, by clicking on this link to get you own trial version of TFH email.
How is MS supposed to read my mail if I send it through Google's service anyway?
Wondering what Google was planning to do with the information they're constantly gathering on me between my emails, searches, news, websites I visit (tracked through adsense), etc, brought me to find a decent set of alternatives: Scroogle for searches, Roundcube for email, and scraper sites like Zewg and Dogpile for everything else.
Ballmer, you need to shut the fuck up and do what you do best, throwing chairs.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
No, I didn't mispell.
.. then how do they filter out spam? It's really a complex process involving genetically modified chimpanzees, ten thousand typewriters, and a whole lotta Cheez Whiz.- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Hi, email is like a postcard by design, Ballmer did tell us nothing really new. My 2 Cent
This must mean, that Hotmail just lost marketshare to Gmail...
why else would monkeyboy care?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I believe the word you were looking for is Piracy. Although, I've never really heard anyone mention Microsoft protecting you from the pirates. Maybe they're just trying to be really proactive and keep you from going to the Dark Side of Evil File Sharing. See, Steve's really a nice guy. He wants to help you.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
> 'they read your mail and we don't.'
Translation: 'Our developers aren't smart enough. Trust us.'
...tends to be overestimated. This comes as a shock to me---and probably you---as Gmail is most popular among those who are younger, collect higher household incomes and are classified as early adopters by marketers. But overall Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail are significantly more popular than Gmail, at least according to statistics compiled by Hitwise Intelligence released in May 2006:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2006/05/google_yahoo_and_msn_property.html
Gmail, which has only garnered a 2.54 percent market share, is dwarfed by Yahoo Mail's market share of 42.4 percent. Additional statistics also compiled by Hitwise compare Google, Yahoo and MSN across a number of categories. Predictably, Google dominates the search category but as noted above the webmail category is a different story. Likewise Google Maps is significantly less popular than Mapquest and Yahoo! Maps.
Seriously!?!? The popularity of Mapquest relative to Google Maps rankles me the most. I wonder how these statistics have changed in the last 12-16 months.
Yeah, well, Google clearly discloses what they do with email, and that keyword-based advertising may be displayed based on the contents of an email. They disclose what, how, and why.
Contrast this to the Windows EULA, which does NOT disclose the fact that the OS will phone home daily, report back what software you have installed, and that your PC may be remotely shut down in error if some "pirate" with a keygen creates and registers the same install key you are using, leaving you with purchasing yet another "license" or turn to "piracy" as your only options.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If microsoft doesn't read my mail, why do they wrap each link in a javascript function? I haven't looked into it, but I always assumed that they kept track of the links I click. This stupidity is why I can't middle click with Opera on links in Hotmail to have them displayed in a new windows, as the URL of the thing is "javascript:whatever".
WTF is *that* about?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Hey Steve! Don't forget the rule of mudslinging contests: it's not how much you sling, it's how much that sticks to you that counts.
My emails are being read by a computer! Oh, no! Now Google's computer knows about my girlfriend's surprise party and is planning on spoiling the surprise.
STFU Ballmer!
Same for most instant messaging programs. You could fire up Ethereal/Wireshark and browse conversations all day on your network. The only instant messaging system that I know of that's encrypted is Skype. (Correct me if I'm wrong) I'm guessing they thought to build this in to Skype because it works on a P2P network.
STICKER
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
...or at least they used to.
A few years back, someone with a hotmail account asked me for web addresses where she could learn more about Free Software, so I sent her links to the usual suspects. When she tried to visit them a couple of months later, she found they didn't work, and wrote back to me complaining about that they were "broken". I was very surprised about the whole thing, because there's not much room for error in http://www.gnu.org/. Besides, the copy in my sent mail archive was correct, so I asked her to please send me the message as she received it.
Of course, I had sent her a plain text mail, but she was reading it as HTML, and hotmail had been kind enough to translate the URL I had typed into a clickable link... only the href attribute of the link did not point directly to the GNU project, for instance, but rather to "http://64.4.18.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=ac40a69cbb8c98b8c7b6ce4475972c10&lat=1037721637&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2egnu%2eorg" which presumably should have bounced the user to the original link's destination. The reason the link didn't work was because that machine seemed to have gone offline for unknown reasons.
Of course, this does not mean that Gmail's idea of doing targetted advertising based on the contents of your e-mail is harmless, but changing the contents of the mail when they deliver it to the user does seem to be at least as bad. The worst part of it is the fact that users actually grant hotmail the right to do it, by blindly accepting the abusive Terms of Service.
Google does "read" email in that it will pick up any URLs you send and add them to their database of things to crawl. At least they did so last time I checked. I know many people who use unlinked directories in their web pages to pass non-public information, without knowing that if the link was ever sent over gmail then google indexed it.
/. has turn into the largest google fanboi club on earth. Oh well, two decades ago M$ was also the up-and-coming company that was battling the big evil giant (IBM). Give it another ten years and the fanbois here will have moved on to another favorite up-and-coming company while decrying evil big brother Google.
As well, if you are into squirrel pr0n, your name and IP is now in a google database where it can be used for "targeted advertising".
I can't understand why would anyone agree to gmails privace policy. Don't take Ballmer's or my word for it, go read it.
Lastlu judging from the bunch of antiM$ posts here it is clear that
I wouldn't worry about Microsoft or Google reading your email. Its people like me you should worry about. :)
This is nothing more than FUD, plain ans simple. This has been debated over and over since Gmail's launch, and seems to keep rearing its ugly head again and again. I've even covered this on my Gmail Tips site. The fact is, yes, Google scans every email message it sends and receives. And so does Microsoft, Yahoo, and EVERY email provider that provides anti-spam and anti-virus services. The only difference is that Google is also indexing keywords. They don't care what you have to say, they just scan the words you use to try to provide relevant, targeted ads. I'd MUCH rather have Google ads included in my free Gmail account than the annoying, flashing, seizure-inducing ads I see elsewhere.
And Gmail ads are often actually relevant. And they have policies in place to NOT include ads for sensitive topics. (For example, if you send an email telling people that your mother died, they wont include funeral service ads.
The fact is that Gmail knows how to do it and Microsoft doesn't.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Err, if I had important and private things in my email, I would... encrypt it. badda bing.
How do I know MS does not read hotmail accounts' email? I cannot confirm or deny that.
Also, I find it very convenient only this part of his totally insane and offensive speech has been commented on slashdot, shouldn't we care more about the straw attacks towards open source or his wish that all open source had a windows task?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
That's just sour grape because Microsoft keeps trying to read my mail on Windows, but they can't get it to work. Instead, on Windows, backdoors make my mail available to any paying spy agency and viruses end up just distributing it to identity thieves in China.
Seriously: Ballmer has some gall accusing other companies of breach of privacy. Google does nothing different from Hotmail or any other web-based mail server that serves up targeted advertising.
As someone who drives mailservers and web filters and deals with idiots who click on stupid stuff, though, I can see some valid reasons to do this kind of thing - if you've got the bandwidth and hardware to run the redirectors, and the resources to keep a disallow-list up to date.
No matter how good your spam filters are, if you expect a reasonable amount of legitimate mail to get through you are also risking that new phishing emails will get through. Or that other spam directing people to virus-laden sites will get through. It makes sense to prevent your users going directly to sites that you don't know about, as you have the ability to then block the redirection if you suddenly discover that dubdubdub dot bankofamericac dot om isn't really the Bank of America website. With the redirection, you also have the potential to have automated systems vet the sites and look for danger signs too - and real-time information about new links in email that are being followed, which could also be used to refine your mail filters if particularly dangerous ones are found.
The re-writing as clickable also means that the recipient can follow the link without manually entering it in their browser. There are good and bad things about doing that, but it's something that makes it easier for most people to use the service without having to think (and again, there are good and bad things about doing that too...)
I'm not saying that that's how Microsoft were playing the game, or that they're not evil. What I am saying, though, is that for the average inattentive Hotmail user, having Microsoft make links clickable AND having Microsoft able to render those links harmless at a later date if they suddenly discover that they've been inundated with links to malware are probably a good thing. Looks like they've dropped the ball on maintenance in this particular instance, but that doesn't mean it's not a good thing in most cases.
Yes, I know... slippery slope, "first they blocked the phishing sites but I didn't speak up because I don't engage in Identity Theft", how long 'til they monitor and block political dissent too, tinfoil hat, etc... but Microsoft could use this as a selling feature for their service without much more work. Use some good data about which sites people shouldn't visit for safety reasons, publicise the fact that Hotmail re-links "for your safety", and you've got another good reason for people to consider using their service. Hell, if they were open and transparent about it and used good data and re-directed to a warning that you could still click through if you wanted to (and perhaps included a security assessment of the blocked page too, and a thumbnail) I'd recommend their service, especially to those people I can't manage to convince to use something other than IE.
i am teh reading your email on dA INTEARWEBZZZzzzz
I'd rather have Google read my mail than have an operating system sift through my personal information and then send it back to the mothership.
You sound like a lawyer the way you are picking at the meaning and twisting the action. You may say the listening and reading are "Human" activities but this is a word to loosely describe and action. You say a NSA wiretap is not illegal until a "Human" interacts with it. Do I not have the right to tell a friend "I got bombed last night." with triggering a keyword scan that then flags the call to be Humanly "listened" to? What happened to "Due Process"?
An earlier poster also commented
they aren't scamming me or keeping tabs on my sex life or political agendaHow do you know they aren't? Just because they say so? How do you know they won't start. The infrastructure is in place, it is just a matter of a few config changes.
If you have a eight foot long 2X4 and keep cutting little pieces off the end soon you are left with nothing.
Freedom is like that...
Um, Microsoft Wants To Identify All Web-Surfers