Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have the option to opt out: don't use gmail. It's not a reasonable expectation that every single web service should be legally required to make every single feature opt-out-able.
[deleted]
Google tell that
Google sued for data-mining students' email
21–30 of 78 posts
Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email
#22The 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…
> but why isn't there any limit to the amount that companies can be sued for?
Because there is no limit on the damage that they could have done (regardless of the cost of the service). In many cases non-customers may be harmed (e.g. Deep Water Horizon) so there is no relevance of the cost of the service to the amount of potential damage that can be caused.
I'm not claiming that this claim is reasonable or that the amount of damage claimed here is remotely correct.
Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email
#23If 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.
How do I know whether someone is a gmail user or not when they're using their own domain?
Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email
#24[deleted]
You have the option to opt out: don't use gmail. It's not a reasonable expectation that every single web service should be legally required to make every single feature opt-out-able.
It's kind of hard to do your job or complete your education without ever using your company or school email address. I suppose you could counter argue that you can opt out of going to university or working for a company the uses Google Apps, but that is starting to get kind of silly in my mind.
Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email
#25The 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 fo…
My experience with Google Apps is when you create a new user the first time they log in they are presented with the T&Cs they have to agree to before they can use the account.
Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email
#26If 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.
How do I know whether someone is a gmail user or not when they're using their own domain?
You can check out the mx settings for the domain using one of the free online tools. If they have already sent you a message then you can look at the raw source of the email to see who and how it was sent.
Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email
#27[deleted]
Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fo…
My experience with Google Apps is when you create a new user the first time they log in they are presented with the T&Cs they have to agree to before they can use the account.
If this Apps for Education platform is targeted at children, are many unable to consent to terms perhaps?
Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email
#29If 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 us…
You can send me an email and I can do quite a bit with it at that point, regardless of what you want me to do with it. That includes generating ads for me to look at to pay for my free email. You might have a copyright claim, but the implied license you give by sending me that email would go quite far.
Re: Google sued for data-mining students' email
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do I know whether someone is a gmail user or not when they're using their own domain?
You can check out the mx settings for the domain using one of the free online tools. If they have already sent you a message then you can look at the raw source of the email to see who and how it was sent.
You can check out the mx settings for the domain using one of the free online tools.
Except that people who are on regular GMail will probably use e-mail forwarding provided by their domain registrar. Especially since the free Google Apps for domains is gone.