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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

#361

Post by morganvachon »

netheril96 wrote: post #335
meanderer wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building profiles of senders can be necessary, e.g., for detecting spammer accounts. Also, email is transmitted in plain text. Sending an email is more like shouting to your friends in the street, rather than putting a letter into an envelope mailed to the recipient. Thus, I don't think an explicit consent is needed. That said, I understand that fair use of such information is a concern.

> Also, email is transmitted in plain text. Sending an email is more like shouting to your friends in the street, rather than putting a letter into an envelope mailed to the recipient. Thus, I don't think an explicit consent is needed. These days Gmail will transfer your email protected by TLS if possible. Not shouting at all.

Exactly. Google seems to be of two minds about privacy. They want to show that they protect your information from the rest of the world, but they expect 100% knowledge of your information in return, so they can sell it to their advertisers. I get that that's their business model, which is why I dropped them completely in favor of paid services that don't sell my information.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#362

Post by jsmthrowaway »

CaptSpify wrote: post #348
fserb wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You do have protections against someone reading your email at Google. And those protections are bullshit. I have no guarantee that they are not reading my email. If a bot has access, a person has access, and people abuse their access all the time. In fact, there have been cases of googlers reading peoples email. And I'm not blurring any line, I'm stating: Gmail can, has been, and will be abused. To pretend that is…

I know this is cold comfort, but every single production data access is audited at Google, and that's after one signs more NDAs than you can shake a stick at to even get logs access in the first place. Each incident, with David Barksdale being the worst, has made them lock down logs, PII, and production access at a level unprecedented of any I've seen (including HIPAA shops).

You're correct that the possibility exists, but any Googler inhales heavily and makes sure their paperwork is in order before accessing prod. The warnings that are displayed are not unlike those when you're removing a nuclear core on a starship. It's scary. They want it that way. You need a damned good reason to even look at subject lines in the inbox (like fixing a bug involving subject line rendering that only appears with a user's specific subject line, for instance), and clicking a message is almost certainly a walk. Like, within the day.

They do take this seriously. I wouldn't call it bullshit. The protections I observed were in place before Snowden, so I imagine it's even more rigorous now.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#363

Post by vaishaksuresh »

gub09 wrote: post #350
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…

Does fastmail let you use your own domain?

Yup they do. That is what I use it for.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#364

Post by CaptSpify »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #362
CaptSpify wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do have protections against someone reading your email at Google. And those protections are bullshit. I have no guarantee that they are not reading my email. If a bot has access, a person has access, and people abuse their access all the time. In fact, there have been cases of googlers reading peoples email. And I'm not blurring any line, I'm stating: Gmail can, has been, and will be abused. To pretend that is…

I know this is cold comfort, but every single production data access is audited at Google, and that's after one signs more NDAs than you can shake a stick at to even get logs access in the first place. Each incident, with David Barksdale being the worst, has made them lock down logs, PII, and production access at a level unprecedented of any I've seen (including HIPAA shops). You're correct that the possibility exist…

I'm sure they have a lot of checks, but that doesn't really matter if:

A) they can be bypassed, as they have been in the past

B) they can be compelled to hand that data elsewhere

So I'm calling bullshit. Until it's impossible for them to look at my data, then they aren't taking it seriously.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#365

Post by jsmthrowaway »

CaptSpify wrote: post #364
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is cold comfort, but every single production data access is audited at Google, and that's after one signs more NDAs than you can shake a stick at to even get logs access in the first place. Each incident, with David Barksdale being the worst, has made them lock down logs, PII, and production access at a level unprecedented of any I've seen (including HIPAA shops). You're correct that the possibility exist…

I'm sure they have a lot of checks, but that doesn't really matter if: A) they can be bypassed, as they have been in the past B) they can be compelled to hand that data elsewhere So I'm calling bullshit. Until it's impossible for them to look at my data, then they aren't taking it seriously.

You're calling bullshit on what, exactly? I'm providing you perspective on the very thing you're hypothesizing about from firsthand experience.

What is your technical solution for operating Gmail without any Googler having the ability to access some aspect of your data? It's email on the Web. Handling that e2e is pretty much intractable, and cleartext or nearly-cleartext with online keys has to exist somewhere even without the Googley things they do to data. I might posit that building a functional service with that requirement would be impossible for the Gmail case and many others (but I'm ready to be proven wrong).

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#366

Post by fserb »

CaptSpify wrote: post #364
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is cold comfort, but every single production data access is audited at Google, and that's after one signs more NDAs than you can shake a stick at to even get logs access in the first place. Each incident, with David Barksdale being the worst, has made them lock down logs, PII, and production access at a level unprecedented of any I've seen (including HIPAA shops). You're correct that the possibility exist…

I'm sure they have a lot of checks, but that doesn't really matter if: A) they can be bypassed, as they have been in the past B) they can be compelled to hand that data elsewhere So I'm calling bullshit. Until it's impossible for them to look at my data, then they aren't taking it seriously.

what's the use case you are worried about? Tell me a story. Who is accessing your date, for which purpose, when, how much, etc... and explain how Gmail is a bad solution because Google "can read it".

Yes, Google does not offer you protection against the Government. That is a true statement. But that doesn't mean that it's all or none. There are so many privacy rights before "a warrant request". And news flash, unless you are extremely good at securing your own mail server, even then you are not protected against a warrant.

Those checks are not bullshit. Every single security system "can be bypassed".

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#367

Post by applecrazy »

late2part wrote: post #316
tzs wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google doesn't offer unlimited data storage. 15GB to start and more can be purchased.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#368

Post by discordance »

fserb wrote: post #265
dingaling wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like my accountant reading my receipts to create my tax return versus a sleazy salesman sneaking a peek at them to find new ways to sell me stuff.

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.

Madness? - remember not long ago when unroll.me was selling your email data to Uber?

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#369

Post by andrepd »

mrisoli wrote: post #135
andrepd wrote: post #17

How do you know? That's the problem with closed source software, and software that runs in someone else's computer. You have no idea what it does. You aren't in control. Someone else is deciding what code runs on your computer. That's a problem.

Big companies can't hide this stuff forever, you can eventually figure out, it is just better business-wise for them to just state they read your emails for ads, it can cost them a lot if they don't, plus most people don't really care. A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking exclusively through WhatsApp about a trip to London(in Portuguese with our very unusual jargon), I didn't do any search for anything related…

That is actually an interesting argument, that they don't lie about this because if it ever came out they would be in deep shit.

Speaking of which, I had a similarly creepy moment just yesterday. I was watching an episode of the Simpsons, and wanted to Google the Bart blackboard gag in the intro because I didn't get it. Just I type the first word and it immediately suggested the rest. Very creepy because I wasn't watching through any Google service (on an Android phone though).

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