Google Says Scanning Text Of Your Emails To Sell Ads Is Perfectly Legal • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Says Scanning Text Of Your Emails To Sell Ads Is Perfectly Legal

#31

Post by Oletros » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 12:27 PM UTC

dangelov wrote: post #30

Oletros wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bigger question is whether doing that to show ads is legal or not What is the difference between "opening them" for full text search or spam filtering and "opening them" to use them for advertising?

No difference in the opening. The difference is in what they do with the data, which is what I believe the lawsuit is about.

If this is is what the lawsuit says: “unlawfully opens up, reads, and acquires the content of people’s private email messages”

There is no difference between opening for spam filtering from opening for ad serving

Re: Google Says Scanning Text Of Your Emails To Sell Ads Is Perfectly Legal

#32

Post by bsullivan01 » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 3:52 PM UTC

Oletros wrote: post #27

bsullivan01 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am asking them to store it there but not to catalog it and make a note somewhere that this person has AIDS, is divorced, lost his house in foreclosure etc etc etc. That's the difference. It's almost the difference between whispering something at a bar vs posting it online, where it stays for ever.

> make a note somewhere that this person has AIDS, is divorced, lost his house in foreclosure And how exactly can do that?

Advertising profile?

Re: Google Says Scanning Text Of Your Emails To Sell Ads Is Perfectly Legal

#33

Post by Vivtek » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 4:11 PM UTC

krig wrote: post #4

Vivtek wrote: post #2

Why is that even a question? Of course it's legal. It's in the terms of using their service in the first place. Nobody's forcing anybody to use Gmail, after all.

Maybe this is a difference between the US and Sweden, but at least around here, there are plenty of things that are illegal even if clearly stated in the terms of use and there is no compulsion involved. For example, it's illegal to sell yourself into slavery, even if you and your buyer both agree to it. A better example might be that it is illegal to sell ones vote in national elections. (do not infer that _I_ think…

We have the same sort of law, of course. It's illegal to sell yourself into slavery, illegal to sell human parts even if they're yours, illegal to grow and sell marijuana to your neighbor (um, well, that one's changing).

So clearly there are contractual acts that are illegal. This one isn't, and I find it odd that people would expect it to be, especially given that people don't otherwise seem to care about privacy at all - as long as somebody in arguable authority says it's for their safety from Bad Guys.

Re: Google Says Scanning Text Of Your Emails To Sell Ads Is Perfectly Legal

#34

Post by Vivtek » Fri, Sep 06, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

dangelov wrote: post #20

IanCal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the servers have to process the emails in some sense, they've got to read the headers for a start. They also must touch and process the body of the email. You simply cannot process emails without "opening them up", such a comparison makes absolutely no sense.

You had mentioned that you don't understand the concept of "opening up mail". I was just making a point that it is in fact quite comparable (your analog vs digital argument). In essence though, I don't disagree with you. It must be done for email to work at all. "Acquiring" though, depending on how you interpret it, doesn't, unless we want spam prevention, custom filters, search etc, which obviously people are used t…

Given that the display is happening from Google's server, then clearly there is absolutely no way for that to work without Google opening the file!

It's richly bizarre that people have just today started to think about this process...

Re: Google Says Scanning Text Of Your Emails To Sell Ads Is Perfectly Legal

#35

Post by rtpg » Sun, Sep 08, 2013, 1:06 AM UTC

I have a hard time imagining the problems with this. This is a case of the "Chinese Room": The scanning in the advertising isn't 'understanding' what you wrote, so its completely different from if a person was reading your e-mail.

I would like it if one day we could start to make that distinction.