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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

#411

Post by Markoff »

cybrjoe wrote: post #72
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.

It's more like your accountant preparing your tax return for free in exchange for aggregating data about your receipts and offering you goods and services you may be interested in.

can your accountant prepare your taxes without looking at your receipts? no. can webmail provider provide you email service without asking your emails? sure he can

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#412

Post by CaptSpify »

fserb wrote: post #407
CaptSpify wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use case is pretty obvious by now: people trying to manipulate me (ads), overreaching government intrusion, and invasions of privacy. I never said that Google just sends everything over to them, but they can come and access my data without me ever knowing, and that's a problem. Just because there are (imo broken) checks in place does nothing to negate that fact. Those checks are provably bullshit by the previous…

as I said, government intrusion can't be defended as is. Name one web technology that is government intrusion proof. Fuck that. Name on technology that is so. Air gapping isn't. Granted, air gapping allows you to at least know about it. But that's that. "invasions of privacy" is not a use case. Give me details. By whom? Your partner? Your coworker? 4chan? Your mayor? Russia? What information are they getting from you…

> as I said, government intrusion can't be defended as is.

yes it can. zero-knowledge encryption is already a thing.

> Name one web technology that is government intrusion proof.

Apparently the iPhone is. pgp encryption is another one. I'd suggest brushing up on basic security before saying things like that.

> "invasions of privacy" is not a use case.

Why not?

> By whom?

By anyone that I don't authorize. Sure, that could be my partner, coworker, any government authority, etc.

> What information are they getting from you?

Are you serious? If you don't even understand that threat model, then again, I'd suggest looking in basic security models.

> you are better defended with 2auth gmail

2auth gmail is orthogonal to the issue. That's an security method. Currently Google does that but still can grant access to anyone they want. That's a problem that 2auth doesn't address.

> not counting legal government requests

Why not? Why remove a legitimate security issue from the discussion?

> 3 cases of email data breaches that were caught

I have no idea how many have been caught, once again, that's orthogonal to the issue. How many examples doesn't matter. It's that they do have access and can do it whenever they want.

> What do you use on your life that has a lower failure rate than this?

That's a completely illogical argument. "We shouldn't ensure privacy/security because other things in life fail more often" makes no sense.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#413

Post by late2part »

applecrazy wrote: post #367
late2part wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right. And my reponse is weak. But.... That's really meant to discourage those "power" users (like me) from abusing and leaving big stuff in there, I think. It's not meant to encourage most people to pay.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#414

Post by Mahn »

thanksgiving wrote: post #397
sumedh wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so walking away from an ads business that may possibly (but I doubt it) be earning hundreds of millions They are making billions from ads, just look their annual report.

Sorry if this is obvious but I went to focus on revenue per user per year. In other words, how much is it worth to fight the perception that gmail is somehow less secure than office 365 because ads (others have pointed out Google apps for business users don't see ads in their work gmail). I somehow doubt that gmail ads are worth even remotely close to $120 (12 months * $10 per month) per user per year. In other news:…

The competitor for Office 365 is GSuite, not Gmail. People that were previously shown ads based on email content are not going to start paying for Gmail.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#415

Post by SpikeDad »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #321
65827 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's all inevitable and we are just powerless peons in the face of the purely efficient and all knowing machine. That's certainly the bullshit narrative Google wants you to believe.

They explain everything in the TOS you agree to when starting a free account. It's not exactly shocking that they mine your data in exchange.

And the 11 people out of 200 million users that read the TOS are indeed not shocked.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#416

Post by hedora »

mistermann wrote: post #320
x0x0 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or maybe they could improve IMAP availability until it is only a few orders of magnitude worse than my local ISP (or the previous one, or all the IT departments I've dealt with this millennium...)

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#418

Post by fserb »

CaptSpify wrote: post #412
fserb wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as I said, government intrusion can't be defended as is. Name one web technology that is government intrusion proof. Fuck that. Name on technology that is so. Air gapping isn't. Granted, air gapping allows you to at least know about it. But that's that. "invasions of privacy" is not a use case. Give me details. By whom? Your partner? Your coworker? 4chan? Your mayor? Russia? What information are they getting from you…

> as I said, government intrusion can't be defended as is. yes it can. zero-knowledge encryption is already a thing. > Name one web technology that is government intrusion proof. Apparently the iPhone is. pgp encryption is another one. I'd suggest brushing up on basic security before saying things like that. > "invasions of privacy" is not a use case. Why not? > By whom? By anyone that I don't authorize. Sure, that c…

> Apparently the iPhone is

If you are referring to the San Bernardino phone thingy, the FBI withdrew the request exactly because they did access the phone by themselves. It just cost more money.

> pgp encryption is another one

lol. Isn't there tons of reports claiming that PGP leaks too much metadata? And that the NSA is collecting those? And that there's no reasonable way to use PGP without leaking those (like hidden-sender whatever).

> > "invasions of privacy" is not a use case. > Why not?

Because I want specifics. Just saying someone "invaded your privacy" doesn't tell me anything. Tell me a full story: entity X did Y to know Z from W. And show me how using gmail made W more unsafe on that case. And what I'm trying to tell you, is that there are two cases:

- legal government related. In which case Google can't (and won't) protect you. It's a fair claim. If you are doing something that the US government wants to know about, don't use gmail. But most things won't protect you from that anyway. Ask Dread Pirate Roberts about it. :)

- non-government related. In which case you are better protected with gmail than most things you can reasonably do. Ask Hillary Clinton. :)

> That's a completely illogical argument. "We shouldn't ensure privacy/security because other things in life fail more often" makes no sense.

Where did I say we shouldn't ensure privacy/security? What I'm refuting is your claim that "it's bullshit because it failed once". Gmail does a better job than most other things. Most things in your life fail more often than that. And most things don't evolve security/privacy wise as well as gmail does.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#419

Post by fserb »

discordance wrote: post #368
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.

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

yeah, that's a horrible thing. But again, not the same thing as me reading your journal. I'm just claiming that you shouldn't mix those two things.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#420

Post by hedora »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #321
65827 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's all inevitable and we are just powerless peons in the face of the purely efficient and all knowing machine. That's certainly the bullshit narrative Google wants you to believe.

They explain everything in the TOS you agree to when starting a free account. It's not exactly shocking that they mine your data in exchange.

Google tracks you even if you do not have an acccount. There is not practical way to opt out.

I disagree with the TOS but we use their services at work. What am I supposed to do? Quit my job?

Even with ads blocked and cookies disabled, so much JavaScript is served by them, they can infer my browsing habits anyway, and I can't count the number of times I've had to rip 8.8.8.8 out of DNS settings in the last year.

How exactly does this constitute a choice to share my private information with them, and what thing that I want am I getting in exchange, exactly?

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