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Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

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Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#371

Post by jodrellblank »

roganp wrote: post #341
chicob wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That directive might be related to what's happening. But let's not be naive: if Google will stop reading our emails in order to send us personalized ads, that's because it doesn't really need to. People share just enough outside their email environment for Google to do its thing. Another sign of which those worrying about privacy should be aware.

Or, maybe: the extra information gleaned from reading your emails is just not that valuable. Not because they have this via other means, but its just not that valuable, period - whether it comes from reading emails or scrutinizing your browser history. We like to imagine that if advertisers knew enough about us, they'd be able to direct our spending, but I think that is far from true.

We like to imagine that if advertisers knew enough about us, they'd be able to direct our spending.

Speak for yourself, I don't like to imagine that at all.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#372

Post by watwut »

rubber_duck wrote: post #258
watwut wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant ad is euphemism for "ad that makes you buy stuff you would happily not own otherwise". Since ads in general work (they make people buy more or different stuff) and you can not objectively evaluate whether you was influenced by ads, it is rational to avoid them. Practically, once add service knows I am women, it insist on showing me ads for menstruation cups everywhere I browse. I also find juxtaposition of b…

>Relevant ad is euphemism for "ad that makes you buy stuff you would happily not own otherwise". Since ads in general work (they make people buy more or different stuff) and you can not objectively evaluate whether you was influenced by ads, it is rational to avoid them. Umm - you should avoid getting information because it might influence you to buy things ? There's nothing wrong with what you said, in an ideal worl…

Ads are not information. They are not factual. Psychological marketing does add at value to me, just like being manipulated in person does not add value to me.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#375

Post by pdkl95 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #224
sqeaky wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> data isn't shared with anyone else without my consent Do you have any way of verifying this? I am not accusing google of anything, I just find this to be an interesting level of trust to have with a free online service.

Google is a large, generally reputable company which has very little to gain and everything to lose by sharing my personal information with others in violation of their own privacy policy. In the absence of any evidence that they _are_ sharing my private information with others, I see no reason not to trust them in this regard.

> everything to lose

Really? Good luck suing them if they decide to sell your data. They certainly won't lose much revenue from fleeing customers if they think up a creative new way to monetize your data with "select business partners"; Google (and Facebook et al) spent the last decade entrenching themselves infrastructure for far too many people. They have far too much power and inertia to lose much in the short or medium term.

> trust them

Privacy policies change. Even if Google has good intentions about protecting your data today, you're gambling that those intentions will not change in the future. You don't know who will be hired/fired at Google in the future, nor do you know how the current (or any) management will react should the company have a particularly unfortunate run of bad finances or other troubles. Never-mind that humans often act irrationally for stupid reasons so any prediction about future behavior has to have a huge error bar.

However, that isn't the big problem with trusting Google to not share your pattern-of-life[1] with a 3rd party: you're assuming it will be Google's choice, or that they will even have any de facto influence over the long-term fate of your personal information. Your trust doesn't make Google infallible; the best security teams can only make hacks less likely. Warrants, legislation, and quasi-legal-but-hard-to-ignore orders from governments happen. Prism (and other mass surveillance programs) still exist. Concentrating valuable data at one location makes it more valuable, so the scope of potential threats to your data increases as more data is collected.

The world is not as just[2]. Trusting that your data will magically stay safe at Google forever - or even just the near future - is only possible if you first pretend that Googles security is and always will be perfect, that the programs Snowden/Drake/Binney/etc warned us about never existed, that no current or future Google employee will ever become disgruntled (or crazy), and probably many more potential threats that haven't been invented yet.

[1] or mundane data like your email

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#376

Post by CaptSpify »

fserb wrote: post #366
CaptSpify wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure they have a lot of checks, but that doesn't really matter if: A) they can be bypassed, as they have been in the past B) they can be compelled to hand that data elsewhere So I'm calling bullshit. Until it's impossible for them to look at my data, then they aren't taking it seriously.

what's the use case you are worried about? Tell me a story. Who is accessing your date, for which purpose, when, how much, etc... and explain how Gmail is a bad solution because Google "can read it". Yes, Google does not offer you protection against the Government. That is a true statement. But that doesn't mean that it's all or none. There are so many privacy rights before "a warrant request". And news flash, unless…

The use case is pretty obvious by now: people trying to manipulate me (ads), overreaching government intrusion, and invasions of privacy.

I never said that Google just sends everything over to them, but they can come and access my data without me ever knowing, and that's a problem. Just because there are (imo broken) checks in place does nothing to negate that fact.

Those checks are provably bullshit by the previous breaches. If they weren't bullshit, there would never have been breaches.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#378

Post by CaptSpify »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #365
CaptSpify wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure they have a lot of checks, but that doesn't really matter if: A) they can be bypassed, as they have been in the past B) they can be compelled to hand that data elsewhere So I'm calling bullshit. Until it's impossible for them to look at my data, then they aren't taking it seriously.

You're calling bullshit on what, exactly? I'm providing you perspective on the very thing you're hypothesizing about from firsthand experience. What is your technical solution for operating Gmail without any Googler having the ability to access some aspect of your data? It's email on the Web. Handling that e2e is pretty much intractable, and cleartext or nearly-cleartext with online keys has to exist somewhere even w…

>> They do take this seriously. I wouldn't call it bullshit. > You're calling bullshit on what, exactly?

really? your firsthand experience is nice, but your ignoring that those methods don't work.

> What is your technical solution for operating Gmail without any Googler having the ability to access some aspect of your data?

They can use any of the current zero-knowledge encryption methods. This isn't anything new and has been around for a long time. There's no need for Google to have those keys.

Encryption isn't a new problem for email, it's already a thing.

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#379

Post by [deleted] »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #289
chicob wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That directive might be related to what's happening. But let's not be naive: if Google will stop reading our emails in order to send us personalized ads, that's because it doesn't really need to. People share just enough outside their email environment for Google to do its thing. Another sign of which those worrying about privacy should be aware.

Exactly. Google already knows a shit ton about you, and given how data driven they are, I guarantee they came to the conclusion that they would still be able to show highly targeted ads with little or no loss in revenue or click-through-rates rates. Heck, dollars to donuts they've already A/B tested the shit out of it to reach this conclusion.

[deleted]

Re: Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads

#380

Post by omarchowdhury »

x0x0 wrote: post #307
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Google already knows a shit ton about you, and given how data driven they are, I guarantee they came to the conclusion that they would still be able to show highly targeted ads with little or no loss in revenue or click-through-rates rates. Heck, dollars to donuts they've already A/B tested the shit out of it to reach this conclusion.

Or they're willing to take a loss on the ads -- which frankly don't make much money -- to go after the far more lucrative corporate emailing/calendaring market. The pricing is $5/$10/$higher per user-month, so walking away from an ads business that may possibly (but I doubt it) be earning hundreds of millions to avoid a cloud over your sales process for the aforementioned multi-billion dollar business seems like a so…

Google has never shown any Sponsored Gmail ads to Google Apps users (the corporate users you're talking about). There is no Promotions tab, which is where these advertisements are inserted for personal GMail users.
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