61–70 of 88 posts
Google could offer a $20/month no-ads no-tracking email service. How many privacy conscious people are willing to pay that? Its not Google deciding to do this, its just ourselves.
This is just a re-hash of Microsoft's Scroogled campaign ( http://www.scroogled.com ). Just as with scroogled, the comparison of a human reading your mail with a machine analysing the contents in order to provide focussed advertising results in a complete loss of credibility.
That profile can and will be used however Google wants' to use it.
Remember, Google's (the company's) only reason for existence is to make a profit, and ALL their revenues come from Advertising - 96 percent.
That's a hell of an incentive to know as much about you as possible, and use that against you to violate your privacy and abuse your eyeballs (sorry for the semantics, I know).
This argument is really vacuous and makes an inappropriate analogy. First, we need to distinguish between attaching ads to the mail experience versus injecting them into the actual content . In the original post, this service would actually open these letters and insert ads into them. This is not even remotely comparable to what most email providers do. They insert ads around the service, but never actually alter the…
Inserting ads on your mail client is not the problem, it's how they target the advertise. Of course they inserted it into the mail to make it clearer, but obviously it's not literal.
Keeping a copy for the user to see is different from keeping a copy so that they can do data analysis later so they can target the ads even more.
And he didn't even mention how they just show the NSA all your mail whenever they ask for it.
Not sure what's dubious about the analogy. Seems like you just read what you wanted to read.
I don't know why this still surprises people, or why Google is being singled out here. Information is transmitted by copying. Every provider has to look at and analyze your messages if they want to do clever things to them, like let you search your archived mail server-side. Even if they don't do anything with your messages themselves, they're still compelled by the government to parse through it all. Nothing is safe…
Once again, this is a fundamental mistake especially techies seem to make when it comes to privacy. Privacy isn't about what is and what isn't publicly accessible, it's about what you do with that information . It's a violation of privacy for any company to follow me around in a public space and record my movements. It's a violation of privacy for a company to use the data I've given them for any other purpose than t…
To parallel your "blaming the victims" rhetoric: walking down the street late at night, will a sense of injustice protect me from a rapist? No; kickboxing classes and a gun will protect me from a rapist. The sense of injustice is for when I'm safe at home and can write a letter to my congressman.
In the moment where you are actually trying to protect a real secret, a sense of injustice that there are corporations and governments willing to pilfer your secrets will not keep your privacy. Encryption and anonymity will keep your privacy.
Machine "reading" the email != humans reading the same thing A machine can't laugh at your embarrassing confession. Nor can a machine talk about your letter to its friends. For either of these things to happen with gmail would require serious risk and effort on part of an employee.
>A machine can't laugh at your embarrassing confession. Nor can a machine talk about your letter to its friends. To its friends at the NSA? I beg to differ.
This is just a re-hash of Microsoft's Scroogled campaign ( http://www.scroogled.com ). Just as with scroogled, the comparison of a human reading your mail with a machine analysing the contents in order to provide focussed advertising results in a complete loss of credibility.
Why does putting a human in the loop change anything? Either way, my data is being used on behalf of other people.
This argument is really vacuous and makes an inappropriate analogy. First, we need to distinguish between attaching ads to the mail experience versus injecting them into the actual content . In the original post, this service would actually open these letters and insert ads into them. This is not even remotely comparable to what most email providers do. They insert ads around the service, but never actually alter the…
You're nitpicking, and doing it wrong. Inserting ads on your mail client is not the problem, it's how they target the advertise. Of course they inserted it into the mail to make it clearer, but obviously it's not literal. Keeping a copy for the user to see is different from keeping a copy so that they can do data analysis later so they can target the ads even more. And he didn't even mention how they just show the NS…
If there is a distinction between target and untargeted ads, it isn't being made through the insertion analogy. Invasiveness has nothing to do with specificity, and the shock value of the piece was clearly intended to come from the opening of the mail and inserting of the ads, not that the service "keeps profiles," which was just a brief aside in the post. Obviously, it's an analogy. Nothing about it is literal. However, analogies are supposed to bear resemblance to the real world, which this doesn't do and which is why it's detrimental to the discussion around these issues. That was my original point.
The OP clearly objects to relinquishing your data in general. He links to articles about "owning your own data" in the footer. I don't think this primarily about targeted ads. What if the post office opened and replicated every piece of mail that you sent or received, then kept it on file in case you needed it at some point. This eliminates any adverse reaction that might come from advertising while providing a valuable service. Do you think that the content of this post is condoning that? I'm not 100% sure of the OP's intentions, but this piece seems discourage relinquishing your data in general. It paints with an incredibly broad brush and fails to acknowledge the complexity of this issue. That is precisely why I don't like it.
If storing mail is bad even without ads simply because it makes you susceptible to surveillance, doesn't that validate the OP's point that storing of any kind is bad? I don't understand. Your arguments seem contradictory, and I suspect that you're making responses just to make them, not because they are constructive to the conversation. I'm not interested in a regressive conversation that is predicated on interpreting the intentions of a third party or engaging in a line-by-line debate that has strayed from the actual issue.
I'm not sure what's nitpicky about my post. Seems like you just read what you wanted to read.
This argument is really vacuous and makes an inappropriate analogy. First, we need to distinguish between attaching ads to the mail experience versus injecting them into the actual content . In the original post, this service would actually open these letters and insert ads into them. This is not even remotely comparable to what most email providers do. They insert ads around the service, but never actually alter the…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57594819-93/google-starts-p...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does putting a human in the loop change anything? Either way, my data is being used on behalf of other people.
Because machines don't care what you do, or who you are. Humans potentially do. They can gossip about you, they can read, and understand, all your private emails and use that information against you.