A lot of people are making noise these days about GMail, Google's new, free email service. 1,000 MB of free storage can't be bad, right? But it comes with a catch — Google will use the contents of the email stored in your account for the purposes of advertising:
Google's computers process the information in your email for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering targeted related information (such as advertisements and related links), preventing unsolicited bulk email (spam), backing up your email, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail. Because we keep back-up copies of data for the purposes of recovery from errors or system failure, residual copies of email may remain on our systems for some time, even after you have deleted messages from your mailbox or after the termination of your account. Google employees do not access the content of any mailboxes unless you specifically request them to do so (for example, if you are having technical difficulties accessing your account) or if required by law, to maintain our system, or to protect Google or the public.
We also may collect information about the use of your account, such as how much storage you are using, how often you log in and other information related to your registration and use of Gmail. Information displayed or clicked on in your Gmail account (including UI elements, ads, links, and other information) is also recorded. We use this information internally to deliver the best possible service to you, such as improving the Gmail user interface, preventing fraud within our advertising system, and better targeting related information.
Google will never sell, rent or share your personal information, including your Gmail address or email content, with any third parties for marketing purposes without your express permission.
I don't know about you, but that isn't particularly reassuring to me. 28 privacy and civil liberties organizations agree with me; they've written an open letter to Google calling upon Google to suspend its Gmail service until the privacy issues are adequately addressed. The letter also calls upon Google to clarify its written information policies regarding data retention and data sharing among its business units.
The problem isn't even so much Google itself as the precedent that this sets. How much is too much information collected from us? Could the post office start reading my mail in case I might be a terrorist? Could the FBI demand my patron record from the library?
Oh wait, they already can.
Update
Mark Pilgrim has tested GMail and determined that it actively discriminates against the blind: In short, the only way to use Gmail is the way that the Gmail designers use Gmail. The only way Gmail could be less accessible is if the entire site were built in Flash.
(On the other hand, he doesn't think much of the privacy issue.)
Stephen says:
Personally, regardless of a site's privacy policy, I would be very uncomfortable with my email residing anywhere but a system under my direct control (i.e. my PC). I'm too paranoid.
On the other hand, with the under-handed marketing campaigns that abound, and the legalization of "sneak and peek" searches (where you conceivably never find out you've been violated), maybe I'm not paranoid enough.
Laurabelle says:
Stephen, if you're that paranoid, you're better off never sending or receiving email at all, because your mail passes through numerous servers on its way to its destination. Each one of those servers could (although it probably doesn't) keep a copy of your mail. This is why email is not secure!
If it makes you feel better, you could sign and encrypt your mail with PGP or GPG, but that might be taking it a little too far.
My concern is not so much what Google would do with the content of the email. I'm more worried about what precedent it will set for other service providers, for example the unseen middle-men who transmit my emails back and forth. If Google can scrape my content, why can't they?
Stephen says:
> Stephen, if you're that paranoid, you're better off never
> sending or receiving email at all, because your mail
> passes through numerous servers on its way to its
> destination. Each one of those servers could (although
> it probably doesn't) keep a copy of your mail. This is
> why email is not secure!
I had thought about that. It's a game of probabilities. It's probable my email would be caught and stored only if it were caught in the same "net" as lots of other people. No one would target me in particular because I'm a cyberspace nobody. And....
Hmmm... Although.... I suppose an intelligent enough person could set up some sort of filtering mechanism to store only messages that it flagged as being "of interest" by whatever parameters it used.
See... now you made me think of something to make me more paranoid. I'll take comfort in having a fairly boring email life, I guess.