Google reads your mail. Did you know that?

[Ron]

...and to think people used to be worried about cookies, now they don't care that Google is reading all of their email.

Baaaaaa Baaaaaa

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

From GMail ToS:

Google maintains and processes your Gmail account and its contents to provide the Gmail service to you and to improve our services. The Gmail service includes relevant advertising and related links based on the IP address, content of messages and other information related to your use of Gmail.

Baaaaaaa Baaaaaaaa

[thisisit3]

Ron, not very relevant to this thread... but Google's GMail is very well known for reading your emails, there was a huge uproar from privacy activists when GMail first appeared. The idea is that GMail scans all emails, documents their contents, sorts them in categories and creates a profile of who you are (along with information like IP address, region, etc).

Your profile is submitted to advertisers and you end up getting "relevant" adverts, for example if you are German, then the adverts will also be in German, but if you have been googling for "sex toys" then the adverts you'll get will be about sex and also written in German (maybe from a German sex shop or something).

In addition, Google gets a freebie out of this, they end up with a huge behavioral database about human-computer interaction, along with regional and personal information of just about everyone on the internet.

There is a discussion going around that there is a need for legislation that will force Google and others to delete database records which are older than 7 years.

[Ron]

You are right. Thread split.

[Ron]

Yes, I am aware of at least some of what they do. I was merely pointing out to someone that there may be a privacy issue in allowing all of your email to flow through Google's GMail.

The thought struck me that it wasn't all that long ago people were running around with their hair on fire over single-party cookies, then 3rd party cookies. Now they don't even care if their emails are read by a mega corporation in order to try to sell you stuff -- and who knows what else.

Google is smart. They knew that after the initial wave of protest, the privacy folks would move on to the next worst thing and then the general population would start to flock to their service, not knowing anything about it and not reading (or comprehending the meaning of) the ToS.

But look at the wording they used in a section I accidentally left out of my first post:

Google's computers process the information in your messages for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering advertisements and related links, preventing unsolicited bulk email (spam), backing up your messages, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail.

Does the use of the phrase "Google's computers" instead of just "Google" there show that the team writing this document was worried about people's perceptions? I think it does.

[Ron]

BTW I don't think that "you're profile is submitted to advertisers" is correct, at least not yet. The Big G does the matching itself based on keywords and phrases from its AdWords program. The advertisers don't know who will be seeing the ads.

Unless it has changed.

[Vin DSL]

Has all the earmarks of an urban legend!

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

[Ron]

It does! Unfortunately... it's perfectly true!

[Vin DSL]

It does! Unfortunately... it's perfectly true!

Oh, please!

I heard this two days ago...

[Ron]

Wow, you're quick!

[Vin DSL]

The point is, if it was worth reporting, I would have...

Moreover, this thread has 3 views and 9 replies! Hello?!?!?!

[Don McLeod]

Google reads your mail. Did you know that?

Ron - I totally understand where you're coming from and recognize that many thousands of people are using this service without reading the TOS and they don't realize what is happening.

It bothered me initially but when I sat down with our club members and explained the pros/cons of using Google gmail we decided to go for it any way. I set up all their gmail accounts and gave the volunteers their usernames and passwords. I explained clearly to them Google's modus operandi and so far we're all good with it.

Let's face it, when you run a volunteer club where the most important thing to talk about is organizing the next event or how to make up an event canceled due to rain, worrying about Google computers monitoring your email is low on the totem pole! Who cares if they throw an ad at you about optimizing your agenda or 10 ways to improve efficiency in your meetings! Everyone has their eyes wide open that ads will show up and they just go about their business.

What is high on the totem pole is that gmail comes without a price tag, powerful yet simple to use, amazing track record of eliminating spam, chat feature, access to other google applications such as Google Picasa, the list goes on.

For me it has been a time-saver because I no longer get tied up with helping club members set up their desktop email application Outlook Express/ Thunderbird/ Whatever every time their computer crashes or they buy a new one. And to boot, they can access their email wherever/whenever.

An additional bonus has been the Google Picasa Photos where you can load up to 1024 MB of photos for free. Having loaded up several albums of optimized 640px pics I have used only 2% of the free space.

The google server has been down on occasion and I'm sure I can dig up some more cons - but on the whole, the past few months with google gmail have served our club well.

[mattsiegman]

Yeah, the benefits outweigh the costs in this case. Google hasn't done much to piss me off yet, and the reason they 'read' the mail is to hook up ads... big deal, everybody else on the web does that or worse.

At least Google didn't sell my email address to spam my inbox with garbage. They do a good job at keeping that crap out, and their service makes email usable again.

[Connie]

Seems to me like I have known for years that Google is pulling data from Gmail. The only thing I use Gmail for is to receive mail for Google reports.

I suspect Yahoo, and MSN are doing the same thing. I'm not sure why Google got singled out recently by one privacy group. In response they have announced they will only keep the data for 2 years.

Really not sure why anyone is surprised about this.

[Frank Broughton]

What ads I see no stinking ads...... Awe gotta love Firefox and Adblock plus & Greasemokey and a few gmail filters!