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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.
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.
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.
Yeah, right.
By using GMail to communicate with them, I demonstrate contempt for EA Games, Sony Entertainment, Google itself, etc. And rightfully so.
Now seriously, when I send an e-mail to somebody@somedomain.com, how do I know for sure their administrator isn't looking at all e-mails stored there? At least Google is transparent about it. Use their service or don't. But if you want to exchange e-mails with a private company out there, you're kept in the dark about it.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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?
Like almost all email services they scan for stuff like viruses and auto-reply loops. Google also does spam filtering and phishing detection, like almost everyone.
Most users would probably be upset if they didn't.
Then you have their promise not to mine emails for advertising purposes. The language is still in the privacy policy... But no evidence they are still doing it. If they were, they would be in serious legal difficulty so I'd hope some evidence would be found.
Basically it's bullshit, nothing to see here.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
>> 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
Now seriously, when I send an e-mail to somebody@somedomain.com, how do I know for sure their administrator isn't looking at all e-mails stored there?
This isn't a falsifiable statement.
Google can do literally anything with your email and that concern could be just as easily swatted away by stating "how do I know for sure".
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.
Your comment has no point. Google tells you what they do. Other companies tell you nothing. Both could be doing more than what they tell you. So any complaint against Google could either be swatted away or answered with "of course they do, it's right there in their policy."
Google not as bad as Microsoft.
Puke isn't as bad as shit, but I don't want to eat either
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, .....
Censor everything! It's DUH LAW!!!!11!!!1!!!
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
Location services use GPS, CellTower signal, and WiFi.
I could see a case if location services are turned off maybe, but for no sim? that's dumb, one isn't needed.
--- Mercutio was right.
Google can do literally anything with your email
...and they made me aware of the fact.
So now I can avoid them if I fancy doing so.
That leaves all other e-mail domains open to inquiry.
I'd say the correct method would be for each e-mail service provider to have ToS linked from their main domain webpage mentioning they don't read the e-mails unless otherwise specified, and be accountable for that statement. This way, before sending e-mails to someone@somedomain.com I would be able to read their ToS and not do business with them if I don't like it.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Your comment has no point.
Statements which cannot be falsified are indeed pointless.
Other companies tell you nothing. Both could be doing more than what they tell you. So any complaint against Google could either be swatted away or answered with "of course they do, it's right there in their policy."
The phrase "Now seriously, when I send an e-mail to somebody@somedomain.com, how do I know for sure their administrator isn't looking at all e-mails stored there?"
Is an appeal to FUD. It begs the reader to prove a negative about something they cannot possibly know anything about in advance because somedomain can be any domain. It's impossible to falsify.
Are you sure?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
Now seriously, when I send an e-mail to somebody@somedomain.com, how do I know for sure their administrator isn't looking at all e-mails stored there? At least Google is transparent about it. Use their service or don't. But if you want to exchange e-mails with a private company out there, you're kept in the dark about it.
When you send an e-mail to somebody@somedomain.com, how do you know that somedomain.com isn't a GSuite-hosted domain, and you're senting it to a GMail account, anyway?
I haven't stopped reading your emails either. Have you stopped beating your wife?
Exactly. It's complicated.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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