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How private is your email? Not very

blog.slidemailapp.com

11–20 of 23 posts

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#11

It’s not entirely clear if this only applies to the free Gmail offering or also the Google Business App offering. This is entirely clear: No. There are no ads in Google Apps Services or Google Cloud Platform, and we have no plans to change this in the future. We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other Google Apps services. Google does not collect or use data in Google Apps services for advertising purp…

So they do read it… just not for advertising?

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#12
The issue of ads are a red herring, if you don't control the server, and aren't using end to end mail encryption, your emails aren't private in the sense the author intends: someone else's server is parsing your emails and has accesss to the plaintext. If it's not parsing them for ad keywords it's parsing them for spam filtering or for IMAP search indexing or it's a service that supports web mail and so it has to sanitize the messages to prevent XSS.

Honestly this blog post reads like an ad for SlideMail disguised as community PSA. People interested in mail security should choose more secure options than just avoiding server side processing.

End to end is the only real way to go for personal 1:1 messages you need kept private.

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#13
post #11

It’s not entirely clear if this only applies to the free Gmail offering or also the Google Business App offering. This is entirely clear: No. There are no ads in Google Apps Services or Google Cloud Platform, and we have no plans to change this in the future. We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other Google Apps services. Google does not collect or use data in Google Apps services for advertising purp…

So they do read it… just not for advertising?

Yes, of course they read it, they must get it into your screen, that counts as "using data."

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#14
post #3

email is still federated, I can start my own email system.. my friends can start their own. assuming we have a good chain of trust between us, all communications are secure. You know what you're signing up for with google, the services they provide are not the product.. you are.. everyone on hackernews knows this, surely?

>email is still federated, I can start my own email system.. my friends can start their own.

Yes, maybe you and your friends. But that's about all. The vast majority of people can't do this.

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#15
post #5
post #2

Do iPhone/US Gmail users really see ads in Gmail on their mobile devices? Not sure whether it's because of our privacy laws here in Germany, but I've only ever seen the (quite general) ads on the webinterface where I've opted out of profiled ads I guess.

UK, iPhone 4s, GMail app. You have to go to the promotions tab to see the ads. Ads don't appear in the other tabs. http://imgur.com/FtxsmhA

Ah! Guess this is due to me not using the "multiple email tabs" feature of Gmail then. Thanks.

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#16
post #6

> Other than rolling our own email server, another solution is to use paid email alternatives ... Actually there are a lot of very strong free alternatives which seeks to protect privacy and security of the users. ProtonMail [1] is a very promising one, for example. The entire mailboxes of the users are encrypted so that even the sysadmins cannot read them. And there are the likes of Riseup [2] and autistici [3], pro…

The main problem I find with these smaller email providers is the uncertainty of their future - they can easily disappear the next day, because they ran out of money or simply lost interest, and then you're f.cked. With Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft you can be at least sure they'll provide their email service as long as possible.

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#17
post #3

email is still federated, I can start my own email system.. my friends can start their own. assuming we have a good chain of trust between us, all communications are secure. You know what you're signing up for with google, the services they provide are not the product.. you are.. everyone on hackernews knows this, surely?

> email is still federated, I can start my own email system.

I did that with a server on ovh. Every mail I send to a gmail/outlook/yahoo account goes to the spam folder.

It became very difficult to run your own mail server in the last few years (if you want your mail to go to the inbox of the person you send it to).

And yes, I set up spf and dkim records correctly.

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#18
post #10
post #3

email is still federated, I can start my own email system.. my friends can start their own. assuming we have a good chain of trust between us, all communications are secure. You know what you're signing up for with google, the services they provide are not the product.. you are.. everyone on hackernews knows this, surely?

> assuming we have a good chain of trust between us, all communications are secure. That is not correct - an SMTP server will deliver email to another SMTP server in the clear [1]. Your ISP or the ISP that the remote SMTP server is using can read it. Even then - running an email server from home has certain issues such as port 25 inbound blocked, or most email servers will drop email from residential IPs. The only wa…

Well, I'm actually a big advocate of PGP and encryption.

however, I know that SMTPd's (notably: postfix) will negotiate TLS where available, and you can configure it to fail if speaking plaintext.

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#19
post #3

email is still federated, I can start my own email system.. my friends can start their own. assuming we have a good chain of trust between us, all communications are secure. You know what you're signing up for with google, the services they provide are not the product.. you are.. everyone on hackernews knows this, surely?

> email is still federated, I can start my own email system. I did that with a server on ovh. Every mail I send to a gmail/outlook/yahoo account goes to the spam folder. It became very difficult to run your own mail server in the last few years (if you want your mail to go to the inbox of the person you send it to). And yes, I set up spf and dkim records correctly.

I know, I did this too recently, but you can build trust.

and I was mentioning my friend to friend example.

Additionally, if someone on gmail had sent me an email, it would go through my spam filters and I would see it.. if I were to reply, gmail remembers that he solicited the conversation and thus I am not blocked..

so it still works, just not so much for initiating conversations, but even then, it'll work after some time.

Re: How private is your email? Not very

#20
post #6

> Other than rolling our own email server, another solution is to use paid email alternatives ... Actually there are a lot of very strong free alternatives which seeks to protect privacy and security of the users. ProtonMail [1] is a very promising one, for example. The entire mailboxes of the users are encrypted so that even the sysadmins cannot read them. And there are the likes of Riseup [2] and autistici [3], pro…

The main problem I find with these smaller email providers is the uncertainty of their future - they can easily disappear the next day, because they ran out of money or simply lost interest, and then you're f.cked. With Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft you can be at least sure they'll provide their email service as long as possible.

As for riseup, they're always upfront and transparent about how their funding is going so that a case like that seems rather unrealistic for them (at least to happen suddenly)
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