17 replies to this topic

[Kelly A]

Watchdogs Slam Google's New E-Mail Service
Tue Apr 6, 7:28 PM ET  

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. hails its new e-mail service as a breakthrough in online communication, but consumer watchdogs are attacking it as a creepy invasion of privacy that threatens to set a troubling precedent.

Although Google's free "Gmail" service isn't even available yet, critics already are pressuring the popular search engine maker to drop its plans to electronically scan e-mail content so it can distribute relevant ads alongside incoming messages.

Privacy activists worry that Gmail will comb through e-mail more intensively than the filters widely used to weed out potential viruses and spam.

Gmail opponents also want Google to revise a policy that entitles the company to retain copies of people's incoming and outgoing e-mail even after they close their accounts.

The e-mail scanning, which Google says will be handled exclusively by computers, has raised the most alarms, partly because it seeks to capitalize on messages sent by people without Gmail accounts.

Google intends to deliver ads by analyzing what's being discussed. For instance, an e-mail from one friend to another talking about an upcoming trip might include links to hotels or airlines.

Gmail has a "definite creepiness factor," said Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google portrays the commercialization of e-mail as a small trade-off for a service that will give each user one gigabyte of storage — up to 500 times more than other leading free services — and provide a quicker, cleaner way to search e-mailboxes. Most e-mail messages opened on Gmail won't even contain ads, according to Google.

Nevertheless, critics say the free storage — roughly the equivalent of 500,000 pages — isn't worth compromising individual privacy rights.

"Consumers really need to look this gift horse in the mouth because it has rotten teeth and bad breath," said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a watchdog group.

The Gmail backlash has inspired Orwellian comparisons likening Google to Big Brother, a disturbing development for a privately held company committed to making money "without doing evil."

"We are not going over to the dark side," said Wayne Rosing, Google's vice president of engineering. "Consumers can expect us to treat their e-mail as private and with a great deal of respect. I don't think we are doing anything unreasonable."

Gmail apparently doesn't bother everyone. Without providing specifics, Rosing said "hundreds of thousands" of people have registered with Gmail.com since Google announced the service last week. The company is still testing Gmail before offering it to the general public later this year.

The enthusiastic response to Gmail probably is being driven by the chance to get so much e-mail storage space for free, said Chris Hoofnagle, associate director for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Hoofnagle estimates Google will pay about $10 annually for each gigabyte of storage the company gives away, a small price to build an audience likely to be prized by advertisers.

"It's not a great deal. Individuals would be throwing away the protections of their communications for a few dollars," Hoofnagle said. "We don't see this as any different than letting a company listen in on your phone conversations and letting the Postal Service open your mail."

Some parts of Gmail even could be illegal, said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, a watchdog group in London.

Google's current Gmail policy advises potential users that "residual copies of e-mail may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account."

Vast data collection like that appears to be a blatant violation of communication protections in United Kingdom and possibly elsewhere in Europe, Davies said. Privacy International already has filed a complaint against Gmail with United Kingdom regulators.

"If millions of people have their communication history kept on Google computers," Davies said, "then that storehouse becomes a very valuable source of information for a range of unintended consequences."

The watchdogs also worry that Gmail could give Google a way to individually identify the people using its search engine, placing a name with the material being sought.

Google already tracks most searches conducted at its site by tagging users' Web browsers with a chunk of data known as a "cookie." Google users are able to remove or block the cookie, although few do.

Rosing said there will be an information firewall separating Google's search engine from Gmail.

"We don't use the data collected on one service," he said, "to enhance another."

[Kelly A]

I guess I won't be responding to anyone with a gmail account. I don't like the idea of my reply being scanned and retained by Google, my email address being distributed, and who knows what else.

[pebbles]

Quote

Originally posted by Kelly A
I guess I won't be responding to anyone with a gmail account. I don't like the idea of my reply being scanned and retained by Google, my email address being distributed, and who knows what else.

I agree. This is kind of creepy.  Who knows what kind of information they could gather and retain from emails?

They say these email services are free, but to me, losing privacy this way is a huge "cost".

[Hairshorts]

i think having ads like that in emails would be terribly annoying, but i don't see this as much more an invasion of privacy than having your email stored on their servers in the first place.  if you don't trust them when they say they're not going to do anything bad when they scan through the email, why would you trust them to store all your email on their hard drives in the first place?

[raveman2001]

it is an invasion of privacy but thats part of the deal. you get lots of space and big attachment capabilities so that they can scan ur mail in order to make $$$. you can scan it, too. i won't be using it but if people don't mind it could be very useful.

[AgainstAllOdds]

bumpity bump......

Gmail still isn't available in the UK, but I wondered if it has gone ahead as the article says. Are they storing emails, are emails arriving with ads? Are people avoiding it because of privacy issues?

Anyone using it????

[Driver Nate]

I recently signed up for it but haven't really been using it.

[AgainstAllOdds]

Bombalurina said:

It is available in the UK. I have an account but I never use it. Mostly because I cant remember my username or password lol.

The only time I'll be worried about my privacy is if I google my name and a big f**k off picture of me pops up.

It must be that its only available in the UK if you know someone who has it elsewhere.  

To register through google/gmail, you have to do it by SMS, but this is not yet available in the UK.

[wanda]

Hey Kelly, thanks for the heads up.

[raveman2001]

I just don't like their software.

[Nazca]

piglet said:

bumpity bump......

Gmail still isn't available in the UK, but I wondered if it has gone ahead as the article says. Are they storing emails, are emails arriving with ads? Are people avoiding it because of privacy issues?

Anyone using it????

I use it every day.

It's available in the UK. But since it's still beta-version (will always be IMO), and they liked the viral marketing thingie, it's invitation only. All regular members have tons of free invites to give away - I have 98 now (just PM me a valid email adress and I'll send you an invite there).

answer to your questions:
a) are they storing emails? - yes they are. Their philosophy to email is that with bigger storage space, you don't need to delete your messages at all. you just archive them, and they're always available through a search box. However, when you want to delete them from your account totally, well, that's different. I think Google will in fact delete it from your account, but will keep a copy somewhere. Why? There are many many conspiration theories all around stating all the Big-Brother possibilities of the evil Google empire. I don't subscribe to those. I think Google's goal with that is to amass a great, bigger quantity of text data (emails), and to use it for data mining - trying to find ways to make their knowledge of internet communication better. Obviously, this is gonna be applied to marketing. Not that they will steal phone numbers and such, but more probably for the internet ads. Of course, this data could be mis-used - just like what AOL did last week-end. I'd rather prefer that when I click "delete", that it's really deleted, zoom, gone. Yet, so far, I trust Google doesn't use the data for evil causes...

b) are emails arriving with ads? Yes, but not all. If you send and receive messages in Klingon, chances are you won't get ads at all. What google does is it sparse the emails (yes, it reads them - more on that later), and find "intelligent" ads to show you - ads that could interest you. It's basically the same as the google ads, and can be both funny or distasteful at times. But those also, like the google ads, small text ads. Nothing flashy, and it doesn't bother me. Ususally, I don't even see them.

If you're using Firefox (with plugin AdBlock) or Opera (builtin in version 9) as your browser, you can even block those advertising messages.

b2) google is reading my mail? Yes and no. No, it's not a human that goes through it, and nobody is there to steal your private data "intelligently". But yes, a program reads through your emails to identify some types of email. Basically, it's no different than what a spam filter does (and indeed, gmail filter spam - quite effectively I must add). All spam filters read your emails, to be sure it's not junk. Now gmail reads them to show you "adequate" (related) publicity. Once again, it could be used to verify identities, political dissenters, pedophiles, terrorists, etc. But google is pretty concious of the privacy of the data they manage, and are usually nice with defending it from the government. At least, they did with the US gov't. And they bowed to China. But that's a mostly different story. As far as I know, what they do is not different than what other free email providers do, Microsoft, Yahoo or AOL. Google has been at least a bit open about them reading your emails, but they're far from being alone.

c) are people avoiding it because of privacy issues? Probably, but I personally don't know many of them. A free email account ain't especially safe against privacy issues, and google is not really different from the other providers. Would you rather trust Microsoft or AOL? People really bothered about privacy will generally stay clear of the free email systems, and it's a pretty decent point of view. One thing is clear, you should not, ever, use such a system to send or recieve highly important confidential data. I mean, really important. Phone numbers, adresses, or your famed receipe for the New England Honeybun, those are probably safe.

PS: there's a website focussed on google "problems", called Google Watch. It's got some info, but mostly, it's a personal vendetta of the author disguised as activism.

***

Now, I think Gmail is not only a very good, reliable and technologically advance system, I think it's done the web some good. The other free email providers, mainly Microsoft's hotmail and Yahoo, were starting to get awfully old. And since gmail has entered the market, both competitor have renewed their email services - with more disc space, a slicker, cleaner interface, and new features.

There's some windows utils, and even a firefox plug-in if I remember well, that allow you to use gmail as some online harddrive, with some limitations. Gmail has more than 2 GB of free storage for everybody.

PS: I'm not a google fanatic, but as far as gmail is concerned, I have about no issues with it. This is not an ad.

[Nazca]

raveman2001 said:

I just don't like their software.

why?

wanda said:

Hey Kelly, thanks for the heads up.

well, consider that Kelly's post is 2 years old, and that much have changed since that. Perhaps it's all still good info, but I think many people have today a much different view of the matter.

[monktbd]

Nazca said:

I use it every day.....This is not an ad.

(long post deleted, just to know that i reference to the long post)


very well put marc-o.

[AgainstAllOdds]

Nazca said:

I use it every day.

Thanks for this, it was really helpful, and answered all my questions :)

edit - I did read it all, just deleted the long post as a quote....

[raveman2001]

Nazca said:

why?

I don't like the way it stacks the email and all the responses together like it does. I just never caught on well to the look, the interface. I guess hotmail has just stuck to me.

[Nazca]

raveman2001 said:

I don't like the way it stacks the email and all the responses together like it does. I just never caught on well to the look, the interface. I guess hotmail has just stuck to me.

Oh, ok, fine. Actually, the way the emails are stacked together is probably my favourite feature of gmail.