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Google Hasn't Stopped Reading Your Emails (theoutline.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're a Gmail user, your messages and emails likely aren't as private as you'd think. Google reads each and every one, scanning your painfully long email chains and vacation responders in order to collect more data on you. Google uses the data gleaned from your messages in order to inform a whole host of other products and services, NBC News reported Thursday.
Though Google announced that it would stop using consumer Gmail content for ad personalization last July, the language permitting it to do so is still included in its current privacy policy, and it without a doubt still scans users emails for other purposes. Aaron Stein, a Google spokesperson, told NBC that Google also automatically extracts keyword data from users' Gmail accounts, which is then fed into machine learning programs and other products within the Google family. Stein told NBC that Google also "may analyze [email] content to customize search results, better detect spam and malware," a practice the company first announced back in 2012.
Though Google announced that it would stop using consumer Gmail content for ad personalization last July, the language permitting it to do so is still included in its current privacy policy, and it without a doubt still scans users emails for other purposes. Aaron Stein, a Google spokesperson, told NBC that Google also automatically extracts keyword data from users' Gmail accounts, which is then fed into machine learning programs and other products within the Google family. Stein told NBC that Google also "may analyze [email] content to customize search results, better detect spam and malware," a practice the company first announced back in 2012.
Google's completely forgotten about "Do no evil."
Good, inexpensive web hosting
If I don't want Google to read my email I'll encrypt it, meanwhile I mostly want them to read it so they can do my calendaring for me... If they can get some deep AI insight from the rest of the spam and shipping receipts in there, good luck to them.
"...needs more than 640K."
-- Bill Gates
"Without a doubt" they're doing something bad! We aren't saying what! But without a doubt it is very bad!
Google reads your email, unlike Microsoft!
Please give this one up, hysteria news machine
Now I blame them for their participation and support of this most evil and wicked race to the bottom.
By using gmail you not only demonstrate disrespect of yourself you also demonstrate contempt for those who elect to communicate with you.
a practice the company first announced back in 2012.
That's an awfully charitable way to describe it... My recollection is that they denied reading people's email for years and in 2012 someone was finally able to prove this so conclusively that Google had to fess up, but naturally felt the need to to point out that this invasion of peoples' privacy was done by "algorithms" and not by people in it's admission of guilt.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Every email provider "reads" your email. If they don't "read" your email, you wouldn't have spam filtering, search functionality, or any sort of automatic sorting. What they use it for can be questioned, but this line is always used and it's quite misleading.
If you aren't running the mail server, then someone, somewhere is reading your email. Maybe they aren't right now, but they are a rogue sysadmin, data breach or buyout from doing so retroactively.
It's like having a conversation in public. If you want private communication, email is not and has never been that.
My memory of signing up for Gmail was that Google was quite open about using the data anonymously for various purposes, a position more honest than many others who do the same without the courtesy of saying so.
No, not just if you're a Gmail user. Google also does that to people who aren't Gmail users but send mail to Gmail users with or without a Google domain. Same as Facebook: If you're in a picture that a Facebook user publishes, Facebook knows your face. If your phone number is in the phone book of a Facebook user, Facebook knows your name and number. You're being tracked. No if.
Note the weasel words, Google just said they stopped scanning the mail for a very narrow specific purpose. They did NOT say they stopped scanning email, they still scan mails for other unspecified purpose.
And, of course, what they collected during that scan, they can apply to ad personalizaton again, any time in the future. That's the key problem, once they got your data, you have no way of getting it back.
That's why laws like GDPR is important, it prevent your data from being used for different purpose after companies like Google got their hands on them.
Oliver.
the $5/mo for a g suite account housed at completely different datacenters. You're still going to get email scanned in order for search to work. And GPS needs to know your location for navigation to work! GASP! NBC on the ball and up to date on all things tech!
Some of us provide paid for email services that we 100% do not read, yet find it hard to compete when people don't realise what the true cost of spyware like gmail has. It's useful to remind people that "free" also means "creepy leaning over your shoulder reading your personal correspondence", because people are too trusting and assume a big friendly corporation like Google would never do anything evil like that, right?
I don't know if you guys have noticed, but when you log into gmail, you're also logged into every other Google service. You honestly believe that all of the information, from your Youtube viewing habits, to your Google search queries, to your email content, isn't being compiled into a nice and tidy profile on each and every person using their services? It's probably even worse if you're using Chrome, where they can easily scrape your entire browser profile.
Facebook has got nothing on what Google is capable of, and most likely getting away with. But I suppose they serve as a nice distraction nonetheless.
>> If you aren't running the mail server, then someone, somewhere is reading your email
This.
We need new e-mail protocols with mandatory end-to-end encryption and signature.
That would also reduce the spam problem to almost nothing.
aaaaaaa
you know damn well they'd keep scanning and compiling your emails. they don't care about privacy...
their business model depends upon compiling and exploiting your data, which includes the contents of your private email, to sell and place advertisements.
I have said for what feels like decades, that instead of being paranoid about "The Government" spying on them, people should direct their attention towards these large, transnational corporations, who, unlike most governments, are only accountable to their owners' pockets. Yeah, governments most likely do spy on us all, but I don't think they are likely to use it to sell us yet more crap we don't need, and they don't sell the information to the highest bidder. Companies do - especially companies, whose business model consists of exactly that.
What people should do, actually, is stop feeding the beast.
Private from OTHER people? Sure. Private from Google and the government agencies they have to answer to? Never.
This goes for all American services and products, whether it's Cisco, Microsoft and Outlook, Google and Gmail, Apple and iCloud -- your information is private to other people, but not the service holder and government.
One famous recent example was The Fappening, which shows every iCloud user's content is fully viewable and searchable from inside Apple and NSA/CIA.
The question still remains if that was a disgruntled Apple employee or the old NSA-employees-looking-at-people's-nude-pictures trick.
GMail is a web service that is now liable for any sex trafficking that they knowingly facilitate. Because they know that they are being used for that, not scanning for it and censoring it would constitute willful negligence. FOSTA makes them liable for all of this now. Just as Microsoft has already started, Google must start censoring GMail soon (there is a bit of grace period at the moment) or risk losing a lot of money in civil suits.
Everyday didn't have all the info needed to properly weigh the pro's and cons of these 'free' services. They thought they get free services in return for watching advertisements. But what they are slowly waking up to is that they also also getting these free services in return for becoming transparant to future employers, banks, insurers, and governments.
That may not be a bargain they are willing to make.
A second change is that alternatives are popping up. There are lots of companies now offer encrypted email, and among my friends more and more of them (lawyers first, consultants next, etc) are signing up for this.
We'll see similar awakenings in IOT, etc. Our job is to have alternatives ready when the scandals grow so big that society wants to switch.
Encrypt your mails to stop Google from reading them, sign them to keep Google from altering them, use exclusively GMail (or throwaway) addresses to avoid handing Google metadata that links back to the parties involved and if you feel paranoid enough use a VPN provider (or some onion routing) to connect to GMail.
Did I miss something here?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you're using windows 10 everything you do, everything you type, every email you read is also spied on by microsoft.
Scanning e-mail because of showing proper advertisement is WAY DIFFERENT to scanning e-mail because of SPAM detection, filtering (important/not important, bulk email, social network e-mails etc).
I don't get how anyone would assume that an email is _not_ read by virtually anybody in the mail transport path. What are these people thinking?
I mean, people do _not_ live under rocks in the desert - if you're using email, i'd say you literally can not have avoided reading about the various scandals.
So, seriously, even if you have nothing to do with technology at all, how can - after the last 15 years or so - anyone assume in 2018 that email is "private"?
I wonder how well would that play with GDPR.... Sound like a clear invasion of privacy. And reading that email content is not *required* for an email provider.
If you're a (any free email service) user, your messages and emails likely aren't as private as you'd think. (Your email provider) reads each and every one, .....
Of course Google read your mail, they have to do it in order to provide the service they offer.
There are services that don't read your mail, like ProtonMail, by all means use them if you really want privacy. However, as a trade off, you don't get full text search, advanced spam filtering, and all the little things GMail offers. It is just technically impossible.
Now, if you judge that GMail features are worth letting Google access your email (the usual convinience/security tradeoff) then you are trusting Google. And if you are trusting Google, what does it do to you if they use your data to fine tune their own algorithms? No human is actually reading your email, it is all robots and anonymized data, or so they say. And if you think they lie, then why would you believe anything that's written in their privacy policy anyways?
Of all then data collecting companies, Google is the most obvious. They constantly remind you that they are watching you, I mean, when they tell you things like "you have a plane at 11am, based on your current location, you need to go by 9am" even then you didn't do anything, then you don't need a privacy policy to tell you that they collect data.
As an IT retiree, I have been using email probably longer than most folks on this board have been alive. And before that, inter-terminal messaging services. The one constant through all of this is that nothing should be put in an email that would not be ok for the front page of the local newspaper. Unless encrypted with a secure private key, nothing online is secure and private. Even if you run your own mailserver (and I have) it is likely that the recipient gets your message through some sort of relay, so the opportunity to have others looking over your shoulder is always there. The same goes for any form of (a)social media. That the content of your messages and web searches get sold to desperate advertisers seeking to increase sales of some junk by microscopic factors is just in-flight entertainment. After I buy something online I get barraged by Amazon and others for weeks with sales of similar stuff... why do they bother? And cellphone cases...
The only real privacy that exists is between your ears... just assume that and you'll be fine. Anything else is delusional.
Australia is now investigating Google about Android phones tracking users even without a SIM card. Pretty disturbing what Google has been accused of lately. Not sure this is news anymore because Google has never been known for being interested in privacy. They are a company by definition is all about collecting data about its users. You either accept that they are intrusive in order to provide services or you don't sign up for Google service if you find this incredibly invasive and creepy.
I tried to send some bank routing info to a business associate. Well withing their posted guidelines (it was a simple text file, stored in a passworded zip), but they did not deliver it to the intended recipient.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6590?p=BlockedMessage&visit_id=0-636614072256826572-791915176&rd=1
At the time (and, still, I think), it was more like an attempt to push me into using a Google Drive, which is never going to happen. Why give them time to brute-force (or try using Big Data to guess) the password?
You still haven't moved to protonmail?
Okay, this isn't very practical in many cases. However, I have recently converted one person on Gmail to use GnuPG with Thunderbird, and it works!
It helps if the person is already using thunderbird, and YOU set it up for them. With the Enigmail extension, the encryption will be done automatically by recipient.
The hardest part is the passphrase - lots of people don't want to remember long passphrases. However, you can get their computer to remember it forever. Not the safest, but it WILL prevent Gmail from reading the mails sent to and from the person you convert.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
At least the people here on slashdot parroting that phrase can sleep well knowing that a self-serving billionaire wholeheartedly agrees with them.
I deleted my gmail account and setup my own email server a long time ago. Nothing on the internet is 100% secure, but at least I have some control. I can wipe the server anytime and keep everything encrypted as I like.
...is because our emails are so boring to snoop around ?
You can buy CLEAN data from Google. That is, if your are in science and need information about population bases, you can buy that from Google. BUT no names/addresses. So, no way to tie it back to you.
Likewise, you can buy access to clean data. I can describe somebody and then target an ad at them. If they click it and fill in information, that was free choice. BUT, again, google does not sell names/addresses and never has.
Unlike Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc. (and yes, this assumes that those are still selling it; it is possible that apple/MS/yahoo/etc quit selling names/addresses, but I doubt it).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
These companies can crow all day long about third parties, but they violate us themselves ten times worse every day. Until regulations apply to them directly, they are pretty much just blowing smoke up all of our asses.
There are a bunch of die-hard alternative hosters from France (https://nomagic.uk/2018/04/01/Nomagic-is-member-of-CHATONS.html) who are providing ad-free, privacy-minded and FOSS-based only online services. After decades of slowly drifting towards mass surveillance, for those who think it is time to make a change, ethical alternatives are on the rise.
I think more and more the market is demanding an alternative to the Google/Apple duopole on the mobile: something more open and more respectful of user's data privacy. Like we had Linux in the 90s on PC, I'd like to see a project like eelo.io to succeed on mobile!
Simply do not use these services. Instead run your own little RPI server behind the DSL modem.
If you still use these services, do not discuss sensitive subjects. Meet people in the real world for critical issues. To do so, forget the phone at home.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
Looks like an issue with client-side stuff - both pgp and gpg are impacted.
1.) Run your own server on an RPI. SSH is already an excellent file sharing protocol. Secure, robust, simple.
2.) Encrypt all sensitive stuff. You can do that with the standard functions of OpenOffice (upon PDF export, for example) and also ZIP. Communicate the key over the phone or by paper letter. Then only NSA/Feds are in the game. Everybody and their dog understands how the symmetric key works. Actually somebody is already offended by this, as many mail servers reject encrypted files. All for your "protection", of course. Work around that using your geek superpowers.
3.) Encrypt sensitive stuff using GNUpg. That will be hard even for NSA.
4.) Stop being a whiney bitch and WORK.
let's think of how to fuck up the so-called 'a.i' then: throw in a signature with nonsense keywords, death threats aimed at evil google execs and stupid google fanbois, in short, anything that screws over the machine learning and spying that forms the basis of their business. installing a mail server, securing it and then register your -personal- domain with a reputable outfit like gandi.net is quicker than jumping through hoops when setting up a gmail account.
Almost all computer users already have crypto software installed:
1.) By using ZIP's encrypt option
2.) By saving office files encrypted.
Communicate the key via phone or by postal letter. That is very secure at least relative to shady corporations.
Maybe they could tell me if there is anything important or interesting that I have been sent recently? (and I don't count their SPAM as either of those things).
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I am now using Bing.com instead of Google Search. Works quite well most of the time.
Also, there is yandex and many email providers on the web, not Goo-controlled.
First Google sells your data to the government. Notice how they sucked up to Obama.
Secondly they sell it to their customers (those who pay for ads and the like).
For Google employees with time on their hands, I can certainly set up a flow of emails between 2 different google accounts. Such emails can contain images and descriptions of my latest COLONOSCOPY for their perverted reading enjoyment.
Everyday Hotmail delivers these scam phishing email to my inbox reliably makes me rest assured that my emails are certainly not being spied on.
"There are services that don't read your mail, like ProtonMail"
That will be the case when hell freezes over.
You can use Google Mail or any other provide, as long as you encrypt the contents. If the metadata is relevant, create pseudonymous accounts and throw them away at the end of a project.
ZIP and the office packages already have crypto built-in. And there is GNUpg for top class security.
Every email system does this.
Even standard ones like Exchange, email AV programs, etc.
Now, granted, it's up to the company whose software is doing the scanning to let you know what they are DOING with the information.
But this article is FUD.
It is interesting to see how people here are Google apologists while if the same had been said of a Microsoft privacy intrusion, all hell would have broken loose. I find it very strange how suddenly people here are comfortable with Google reading their innermost thoughts, whereas they take out the pitchforks when Microsoft siphons of a little telemetry data.... Odd very odd. Or should I say: Be consistent?
Rights must apply to all or they have meaning.
..at the puke & shit buffet!
Unfortunately, most consumers won't give a fudge until data is leaked to somebody who does something sinister or embarrassing with it in a way that makes national news, similar to the Facebook & Boston Analytics fiasco. (And it's too early to know if this will make Facebook fully shape-up.)
Some consumers may indeed accept such snooping to get free services (assuming the implications are made clear up front). However, it may exacerbate the inequality problem where the wealthy can afford low-snoop options while the poor pretty much have to live with heavy snoopware.
Some chided the Clintons for routinely smashing retired cell-phones, but if you can afford this, it's the proper course of action, per protecting your privacy. (Why the Clintons were smart about this but dumb on other IT aspects is peculiar. Speculations range from Hanlon's razor to mass conspiracy. I won't go there today.)
Table-ized A.I.
yeah no shit it's a fucking core feature of Android that I can book an Amtrak ticket and as soon as the email confirming it arrives, my calendar on my phone automatically blocks off my transit time
I deleted my gmail account and setup my own email server a long time ago. Nothing on the internet is 100% secure, but at least I have some control. I can wipe the server anytime and keep everything encrypted as I like.
But what if you need to email someone using Gmail? Doesn't all that effort for privacy go out the window?
i don't use gmail either, but if you correspond with anyone who does, your mail is scanned.
Water still wet, sky still blue, people still gullible.
I'm sure you are very happy with people sending and receiving you unencrypted email. Now your ISP can build a list of what you favorite things are.
I haven't stopped reading your emails either. Have you stopped beating your wife?
Explain to me how Google will wiretap the phone I use to communicate a key.
a Data mining company, not an Advertising company
Casteism
For those of us who sent email back in the day the mantra was to never say anything in an email that you wouldn't post on the bulletin board at a supermarket (or say to your sainted grandma). Most understood that email in plain text was routed through many a server (and could thus be parsed by its admin or his tools). The expectation of privacy was a sum divided by zero. As the popularity of email exploded when the net was opened people somehow got the idea that email was private. It wasn't, of course, and law enforcement and security agencies Hoovered up incriminating emails with complete impunity. I have been amazed at the stuff people got busted for because of emails. And some people who should really have known better got stuffed.
So when Google offered me a virtually bottomless free inbox so that a robot could parse my non-private commo for ad leads I knew exactly what the deal was. Private communications, such as they were, went via other media. I was not really giving up anything to my mind. And when I planned a camping trip with friends via email I might get a modest text ad for a sleeping bag. Outrage...The nerve of those people!
Privacy really deteriorated when people started using credit cards and debit cards, anyway. It is kind of incredible how much people give up voluntarily. And I confess to being somewhat resigned for the sake of convenience. But....mikes and cameras that you pay for to put in your home is where I draw the line. "Alexa! Go take a pill."
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy