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Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out

malwarebytes.com

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Re: Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out

#51

Post by rootnod3 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #20
jmclnx wrote: post #8

Oh Well, I left gmail years ago, now it is used for junk mail, good luck loading ads going to gmail into your AI :)

What did you move too? I was thinking of moving my personal email off of Gmail for a while. It's just 15+ years of accounts to untangle. I long made a "spam/unimportant site verification " account, so that's set.

Honestly, get a small VM at openbsd.amsterdam or another good hoster and just do it yourself. OpenBSD has outstanding documentation, standing up SMTPD and Dovecot there is super simple, especially for a single user and not a whole group or family (where LDAP or Kerberos would be warranted). Just take initiative and own your data. Does it cost a little bit upfront time? Sure, but maybe just weekend. Does it require a little maintenance here and there? Sure. But still cheaper than paying for fastmail or waiting for fastmail to also exploit your data because the shareholders said so....just own your data.

Re: Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out

#52

Post by rootnod3 »

muwtyhg wrote: post #46
jmclnx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own domain.

Assumedly you need an email hosting service to place behind your domain, correct? Or do you self host an email server? If you are completely self-hosting, how do you deal with being marked as spam by large spam filter organizations for being a low-trust sender?

In daily practice you don't. Unless you host in a DC with lots of spam. Use small but trusted hosters.

But as long as you get SSL/DKIM/SPF and the other stuff right, and it's not THAT difficult, then most hosters will let you through. Unless it's German Telecom, because for some reason t-online.de decided to only allow emails from hosters they whitelisted and there's a whole approval process which even requires registering with them with an email that is NOT from your domain and even a fax, but honestly fuck anyone using that domain.

Re: Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out

#53

Post by neilv »

rootnod3 wrote: post #50
neilv wrote: post #13

The article is useful overall, but the following line is such bad journalism that I want to call it out, since we can't afford to have people dumbed-down. > The reason behind this is Google’s push to power new Gmail features with its Gemini AI, helping you write emails faster and manage your inbox more efficiently.

Alright, I see that line, but in what sense is that bad journalism? I could in the same vein call this out as a bad comment.

A journalist is stating a corporate PR explanation for a sketchy action as fact. And it's not even a very believable reason, at least not completely, and the journalist certainly isn't verifying it. And it's important.

Re: Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out

#54

Post by mmooss »

rootnod3 wrote: post #49
mmooss wrote: post #3

Google can read the emails of everyone who corresponds with a Gmail user - which is almost everyone - and they can't opt out.

One could use encryption but most receiving users have not the faintest clue on how to use that. If most people would care, then I wouldn't give a flying fuck about what Google does because they can't read my mail even if they wanted to.

You can't really use encryption for a couple of reasons:

1. Encrypted email only protects the email body. All the metadata - who is emailing who, when, from what servers - as well as the subject line, are in the clear regardless. The metadata is more valuable than the data in many cases.

2. Unless users download all their Gmail messages, leaving none on the server (essentially, like an old POP account), then the decrypted message bodies will be in their Gmail account for Google to read.

Re: Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out

#55

Post by gitaarik »

neilv wrote: post #53
rootnod3 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I see that line, but in what sense is that bad journalism? I could in the same vein call this out as a bad comment.

A journalist is stating a corporate PR explanation for a sketchy action as fact. And it's not even a very believable reason, at least not completely, and the journalist certainly isn't verifying it. And it's important.

But journalists have to include the statements from both sides. And then it's up to the audience to make an opinion of it.

Re: Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out

#58

Post by [deleted] »

mariusor wrote: post #41
teachrdan wrote: post #4

Link for the lazy: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/general Find "Smart Features", uncheck, and press save, which will reload Gmail. Then find "Google Workspace smart features" and click the "Manage Workspace smart features settings" button and unselect everything.

For me this feature has been disabled for as long as I remember it being there. I think it predates the AI craze by quite some time.

[deleted]

Re: Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out

#60

Post by neilv »

gitaarik wrote: post #55
neilv wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A journalist is stating a corporate PR explanation for a sketchy action as fact. And it's not even a very believable reason, at least not completely, and the journalist certainly isn't verifying it. And it's important.

But journalists have to include the statements from both sides. And then it's up to the audience to make an opinion of it.

No they don't. And that's not what the article did here.
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