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"I read your email"
04/15/2004 Entry
I used to have a sign up in my office that said “I read your email”. It was just a joke, a geek’s bumper sticker to shock people. But as with so many things, what may seem like a joke or far-fetched idea one day suddenly becomes mainstream reality.
By now I’m sure many people have read about the controversy surrounding Google’s proposed new free email service, GMail. Soon after the company announced the forthcoming new service, privacy advocates started criticizing Google for potential privacy violations. The basic idea is this: the service may scan the contents of people’s email to figure out the most relevant targeted advertisement. One response to the reactions has been to say that people have a choice to use this service. If they are bothered by the practice, they do not have to use GMail. But is it really as simple as that?
Let’s set aside for a moment the issue that many users probably do not read the agreement they sign or even if they read it they may not understand its full implications. Let’s assume that those who sign up for the service do so because for whatever reason they do not mind that their emails get scanned. Okay. But what do you do if you get correspondence from someone who is using a GMail account? If you respond to them then your email will be scanned as well regardless of what email service you use. You did not opt to use GMail because you are bothered by the implications of your mail being scanned. But what can you do? Worse yet, let’s assume you are writing to an email address that the recipient uses as an alias that forwards to a GMail account. You have absolutely no idea that your mail is ending up in the mailbox of someone whose every message gets scanned.
So when people say users will have a choice to opt in and use GMail knowing that their emails may be scanned, I do not think they are considering the implications of the scanning for the correspondants of GMail account users.
Replies: 4 Comments have been posted, click here to see them and add your own
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