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Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

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Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#311

Post by 4684499 »

I'm fine to let them scan my emails for spam filter, yet they use it as an excuse to justify their data collection and other things they do with my data, which is unacceptable for me. How would I know if they are going to do things against my interests one day? Ads targeting is already against mine.

I used to see Google as a stalker. How naive I was. There are billions of people being stalked, exploited, and the whole process is automated. It comes to me that users are not victims of stalking, they are lab rats.

Now Google stopped reading emails for ads, but they'll still read for other purposes, which still makes me as a user feel insecure. I value my privacy, I have my dignity, I shouldn't be a lab rat that they can just observe however they want only because they provide free cheese.

Even if I start using a paid account to stop them from reading my emails (assume paid account with better privacy protection is possible), I couldn't stop them from reading others'. Stopping the data collection of one user won't change the situation, they still have other lab rats' data they could collect and analyze, which enables them to learn or predict other rats' behaviors.

The worst thing is, Google is not the only company doing this right now. Surveillance technologies are developing, it's like every data company has grown their teeth and become more thirsty for blood.

Edit: words.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#312

Post by briandear »

joosters wrote: post #219
SN76477 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://gsuite.google.com/products/gmail/ About $60 a year I have about 8 accounts that I use.

This hardly frees you from Google's data gathering. They will have records of your IP address used to collect the emails and your access history, so they know (roughly) where you live, what times of day you are active, and can probably infer stuff like when you are on holiday. If you are in the same house as someone else, they probably use Google too and the shared IP address lets Google tie the two identities togeth…

Isn’t that assuming you are using the web mail and not en email client?

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#313

Post by ATsch »

e12e wrote: post #294
sebastian wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some type of proof‐of‐work for email addresses that have not been previously white-listed. Similar to what BitMessage does[1]. Sending emails to new/random contacts shouldn't be that easy anyway. [1] https://bitmessage.org/bitmessage.pdf

Encrypting email to a single recipient is (a weak) proof of work. There's a big difference between sending 10k copies of a plaintext email, and retrieving a public key and encrypting to 10k recipients - not to mention that filtering out all non signed/not-signed-by-trusted-key should be a decent start for a whitelist/greylist. I'd be curious if anyone ever got gpg-encrypted spam?

Well, I doubt anyone gets GPG encrypted spam, because only a small number of people actually know how to decrypt GPG.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#314

Post by duncan_bayne »

tomaskafka wrote: post #303
vaishaksuresh wrote: post #173

I very recently switched to fastmail and couldn't be happier. For $90 a year, I don't have to deal with people snooping and tracking me around for ads. I know google is trying to give me value with all their facial recognition and recommendations, but I don't think it is going to end well. When it does end badly, it will be too late for the user because we would've given up all the data. I don't want Google to build…

I have a problem with price. $90 for about 20 personal emails per year and a bunch of useful newsletters? Is there a $10 hosted mail that sends and receives reliably and doesn't sell my personal data on top of subscription (like AV companies)?

The support is first rate. I've seen their developers on Github helping to track down a synchronisation problem that could have either been with the open source tool, or Fastmail.

Turns out it was a Fastmail bug, and they promptly fixed it.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#315

Post by CaptSpify »

sqeaky wrote: post #169
soperj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you're buddhist?

There are many flavors of Buddhism, which one matters here for the point you are making? EDIT - I am not sure why I am being downvote, I legitimately don't get his point and figured I would for more info rather than just calling him out as a troll or something. Is there something obvious I should know?

Disclaimer: I know nothing of Buddhism, I haven't even read the Wikipedia page

I believe some Buddhism teaches something along the lines of: personal possessions are bad, and freedom is found in not owning anything.

I think OP is saying: advertising goes directly against that line of thinking. It is actually tempting a Buddhist to buy more stuff, thus going against their religion.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#316

Post by late2part »

tzs wrote: post #262
jikeo wrote: post #164

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems weird that the reporter nor any of the 140+ comments so far seemingly don't mention the recently published proposal for a new ePrivacy directive in the EU that will make it a lot harder for Google to scan e-mails in the first place. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy-idUSKBN14U1FL https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp-... http://www.kempli…

Wouldn't Google be able to largely mitigate the effects of that if they wanted to by making it so accounts that do not consent to the scanning get smaller mailboxes or do not get spam filtering or something like that? I'd expect that would get most of its users to consent.

Name one free, popular, profitable, large scale service that offers limited capacity on their offering. Very very few. You offer unlimited and you charge for increased value or you monetize with ads. Freemium is mostly dead.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#317

Post by late2part »

skrause wrote: post #33

I never understood the argument that some automatic scanning for keywords is like "reading" your mail. By that same logic isn't Gmail's spam filter still "reading" your mail? It is classifying your mail based on content after all...

By your logic, the NSA isn't recording your calls or emails, just filing them away for classification?

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#318

Post by fserb »

calibration263 wrote: post #299
fserb wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you accountant was a computer. We have to stop this madness of thinking that "John READS my diary" means the same thing as "The function fread() READS nitems objects". Those don't mean the same thing except in a metaphorical sense. It's insane.

It's not about who reads it, it's about who has access. If a system has access to read my email as plain text, it means anyone who owns or can get access to that system can read my email. Some one wrote fread, it could've been john, and john absolutely could be reading your email. Look at the what happened with ubers god mode. That said the value of gmail for me exceeds the risk of people I care about reading my emai…

Of course access is the important thing.

But then again, in the context of the story, it doesn't change anything. Google still has access to your email. That it is not "reading" for the purpose of ads is just a minor thing that doesn't impact your privacy/security in any way (in the terms that you are describing).

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#319

Post by fserb »

CaptSpify wrote: post #295
fserb wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you accountant was a computer. We have to stop this madness of thinking that "John READS my diary" means the same thing as "The function fread() READS nitems objects". Those don't mean the same thing except in a metaphorical sense. It's insane.

why does it matter? Google has access to read my email, and if they want (or are pushed to), they can single me out and then go and read them. Sure, 9/10 times it's a bot reading my emails, but there's nothing stopping them from doing it.

it matters exactly because of what you are saying.

You do have protections against someone reading your email at Google. Both from a expectation of privacy, but also from a company perspective. You also do have some non-expectation of privacy (if, for example, the US government wants to read your google email, they can ask for it and they eventually will).

The day someone with a brain and an opinion on Kim Kardashian at Google reads your email, there is a HUGE difference from when Google is "reading" your email for ads/spam/spelling/whatever.

You don't want to blur that line being wishywashy with language. You want to know that difference. The fact that it could happen is why you need that clear separation between "machine reading" and "a person reading".

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#320

Post by mistermann »

x0x0 wrote: post #307
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Google already knows a shit ton about you, and given how data driven they are, I guarantee they came to the conclusion that they would still be able to show highly targeted ads with little or no loss in revenue or click-through-rates rates. Heck, dollars to donuts they've already A/B tested the shit out of it to reach this conclusion.

Or they're willing to take a loss on the ads -- which frankly don't make much money -- to go after the far more lucrative corporate emailing/calendaring market. The pricing is $5/$10/$higher per user-month, so walking away from an ads business that may possibly (but I doubt it) be earning hundreds of millions to avoid a cloud over your sales process for the aforementioned multi-billion dollar business seems like a so…

If they want me to use gmail for corporate email they better invest some effort in some UI & usability redesign.
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