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Google sued for data-mining students' email

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Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#11

Post by dagw »

not_paul_graham wrote: post #4

The plaintiffs are seeking payouts for millions of Gmail users. The financial damages would amount to $100 per day of each day of violation for every individual who sent or received an email message using Google Apps for Education during a two-year period beginning in May 2011. So assuming at least 1 million users, they are seeking: 1,000,000 users * $100 per user * 365 days per year * 2 years = ~ $73 billion in dama…

Initial damage claims are often made on the assumption that once all appeals and negotiations are done you'll be very lucky to walk away with even 5% of the original number.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#12

Post by lumpygravy »

Zenst wrote: post #6

Firstly the EULA (which nobody reads) does cover this and then the aspect of you get what you pay for and again their choice compeletely how they wish to spend thier money, or not in this case as it is a free service they are using. Also the cusomised ad advertising is an option you can opt out of, so once again I'm not understanding the issue here beyond grabbing some headlines for mistakes that were avoidable on ma…

Also the cusomised ad advertising is an option you can opt out of, so once again I'm not understanding the issue here beyond grabbing some headlines for mistakes that were avoidable on many levels.

As far as I understood from previous coverage and reading the privacy policy, the point is that e-mails are mined even if ads are turned of for the domain. The resulting profiles are then used for showing contextual advertisements in services that are not in Google Apps (e.g. Google search and Google+). Google's lawyers have also admitted that this is true. IANAL, but reading the privacy policy and the ToS for Business accounts, it seems to be the same there.

Of course, you can completely opt out of interest-based ads, both on Google services as on Google ads across the web. But I assume that profiles are still built, if not used.

A related problem is that persons sending e-mail to a GMail address (which could be hidden behind a non-gmail domain) never consented to the ToS and their e-mails are profiled. To which Google's reaction was: "all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing." [1] IMO there is a difference between scanning e-mail for spam and viruses, and using the content to build a profile of the sender or receiver.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-gma...

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#13

Post by ronaldx »

not_paul_graham wrote: post #4

The plaintiffs are seeking payouts for millions of Gmail users. The financial damages would amount to $100 per day of each day of violation for every individual who sent or received an email message using Google Apps for Education during a two-year period beginning in May 2011. So assuming at least 1 million users, they are seeking: 1,000,000 users * $100 per user * 365 days per year * 2 years = ~ $73 billion in dama…

The cost of the product is surely irrelevant here: If the product damages your life (in an unexpected way), you should be able to sue to recoup those damages.

In this case, presumably the individuals may have been signed up to Google Apps for Education without their direct consent (or, it was an unstated requirement of their courses to sign up).

Also note: companies have access to liability insurance to cover them for being sued out of existence. Google presumably have a budget for lawsuits.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#15

Post by onion2k »

Houshalter wrote: post #7

If you send an email to a gmail user of course you are consenting for their email service to process the email. Things like spam filtering and preloading images depend on this.

You could be consenting for the email service to do reasonable processing on each individual email (eg filtering and preloading). Sending an email doesn't necessarily have to give the receiving agent permission to build a profile for the specific sender that maps all the emails they send to the service to multiple, separate recipients on to a single graph.

Also, with Google's "Google Apps for Business", a user can use their own domain for their email. Sending someone an email doesn't inform the sender that they could be contributing to a Google profile.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#16

Post by jw2013 »

not_paul_graham wrote: post #4

The plaintiffs are seeking payouts for millions of Gmail users. The financial damages would amount to $100 per day of each day of violation for every individual who sent or received an email message using Google Apps for Education during a two-year period beginning in May 2011. So assuming at least 1 million users, they are seeking: 1,000,000 users * $100 per user * 365 days per year * 2 years = ~ $73 billion in dama…

Gmail is free to you, but their ads can earn more money by mining the info in your email. Is this really free here? Your email content has value.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#17

Post by account99282 »

The suit maintains that, because such non-Gmail users who send emails to Gmail users never signed on to Google's terms of services, they can never have given, in Google's terms, "implied consent" to scan their email.

This. One victim is the private mailing list: There's always at least one sap who subscribes using google mail.

My personal hope is that suits like this will one day push them to discontinue gmail.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#19

Post by scrollaway »

account99282 wrote: post #17

The suit maintains that, because such non-Gmail users who send emails to Gmail users never signed on to Google's terms of services, they can never have given, in Google's terms, "implied consent" to scan their email. This. One victim is the private mailing list: There's always at least one sap who subscribes using google mail. My personal hope is that suits like this will one day push them to discontinue gmail.

Oh, look, a troll.

Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email

#20

Post by Oletros »

lumpygravy wrote: post #12
Zenst wrote: post #6

Firstly the EULA (which nobody reads) does cover this and then the aspect of you get what you pay for and again their choice compeletely how they wish to spend thier money, or not in this case as it is a free service they are using. Also the cusomised ad advertising is an option you can opt out of, so once again I'm not understanding the issue here beyond grabbing some headlines for mistakes that were avoidable on ma…

Also the cusomised ad advertising is an option you can opt out of, so once again I'm not understanding the issue here beyond grabbing some headlines for mistakes that were avoidable on many levels. As far as I understood from previous coverage and reading the privacy policy, the point is that e-mails are mined even if ads are turned of for the domain. The resulting profiles are then used for showing contextual advert…

Do we have a proof that Google profiles non Gmail users?

Take into account that process the email is not the same that profiling that user

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