Google filing says Gmail users have no expectation of privacy

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57598420-93/google-filing-says-gmail-users-have-no-expectation-of-privacy/

by uladzislau • 13 years ago

45 25 13 years ago

news.cnet.com

QueLorean• 13 years ago

Does anyone on Hacker News who still uses Gmail expect privacy?

logn2• 13 years ago

Never did:

http://web.archive.org/web/20020802023758/http://gmail.com/f...

rwg• 13 years ago

You're aware that gmail.com was registered to an entity that wasn't Google between its original registration on 1995-08-13 and Google's acquisition of it on 2004-03-31, right?

While looking for that second date, I dug up a piece of spamming + domain hoarding history:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.protocols.tcp-ip....

(Note the date of that post and what domain shows up in his list...)

northwest2• 13 years ago

Does anyone on Hacker News still use Gmail?

scrrr• 13 years ago

Yeah. And I feel bad recommending GMail to friends and family before. Now I tell them to leave it. I should have known.. Right now my Google usage is at almost 0%. (I still use calendar.. for now.)

battwell• 13 years ago

I expect lots of us use it. There is nothing in my email that the NSA would find remotely interesting. Therefore, there is no practical reason not to use it.

levosmetalo• 13 years ago

What else would you recommend if you own your own domain? I must have webmail, IMAP, calendar, contact list, task list and seamless sync with mobiles. And be free. And be outside of the US.

otterley• 13 years ago

Absolutely, until there's a viable replacement for it.

nullc• 13 years ago

personally I was more amused by the "ordinary course of business" defense— that an otherwise (as argued by the plaintiffs at least) unlawful activity could somehow be made lawful by it being part of the defenses "ordinary course of business".

I look forward to seeing bank robbers use that one. :P

moomin• 13 years ago

They should put that phrase on the login page.

acqq2• 13 years ago

Eric Schmidt, then Google CEO, openly said something in that direction in 2009:

http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-...

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

cyphax2• 13 years ago

What a terrible, terrible "argument". As though anything one might want to hide is something they "shouldn't be doing in the first place". Yeah you shouldn't have been raped but now that you have, you can't tell anybody about it through OUR service. Because we just don't care. Alcoholic? Don't count on OUR service, or any other service on the internet OR your home phone to get any support without anybody finding out. Not to mention: shouldn't have been doing that.

There is NOTHING wrong with having stuff to hide. I have stuff to hide. Didn't break to law, either. This is why I'm moving away from GMail, and Google in general, save for some searches every now and then and perhaps image search. "Don't be evil"? More like "We don't care".

Privacy IS important; anybody who says not is definitely someone I don't understand at all.

logn2• 13 years ago

Eric Schmidt would feel right at home in prison then. I hear there's not much privacy there either.

Oletros2• 13 years ago

Like all the mail providers should do? Because it applies to all mail providers, not just Google

pdeva1• 13 years ago

i want to +100 your comment

zmmmmm• 13 years ago

The headline is deliberately inflammatory, leaving off the "turned over to third parties".

The actual statement itself is almost a tautology - when you give someone information, you don't expect that the information is private from them because you just gave it to them.

itsbits• 13 years ago

Few years back i lost my gmail id after some hacker deleted it which i used for everything like my accounts, offer letters i received etc. Since then i distributed my things in different places. I still use another gmail account only for general purpose..i believe fastmail more than any other..ofcourse recently i am loving outlook but still Microsoft is more non-trustable than google..ain't it?...

sgentle• 13 years ago

This is completely misleading. The article actually says this:

  Plaintiffs in the case contend that Google's automated
  scanning of e-mail represents an illegal interception of
  their electronic communications without their consent. 
  However, Google, which uses automated scanning to filter 
  spam and deliver targeted advertising to its users, noted 
  that plaintiffs consented to the practice in exchange for 
  the e-mail services. Google goes on to say that courts have 
  held that all e-mail users "necessarily give implied consent 
  to the automated processing of their emails."

This is the same old "algorithms reading my email is a violation of privacy" argument from back when Gmail started. Ignoring the bullshit headline, Google's argument comes down to the following:

1. Machines scanning your email doesn't violate privacy 2. Even if it did, you consent to it when you sign up for a Gmail account 3. It's impossible to provide email hosting without some level of automated processing of messages

Google's clearly in the right here, and the various outlets reporting this story need to learn some journalistic ethics.

johnchristopher2• 13 years ago

1. Machines scanning your email doesn't violate privacy

Depends what the machine or the operator is doing with the result of that scan.

2. Even if it did, you consent to it when you sign up for a Gmail account

Gmail users consent to scan from Gmail but if google holds in court that consent is implied to the automated processing of emails then someone might think this content extends to any machine touching the mail on its trip to the recipient. Which is not the same as "scanning mail content to get useful keywords for better ads".

I wonder if google is allowed to scan mails it has received but the user hasn't yet opened. It means google has access to the user's pen buddy mail without that pen buddy's consent. I agree consent from the user is given when he reads any mail that include or not his correspondent text But that correspondent might be using another mail provider and my point is that he hasn't given explicit consent to google to scan its mail... the one allowing that is the gmail user.

What happens if I say to my correspondent "don't share this" and he opens the mail. Has he betrayed me by sharing that mail with google ? If google has indexed that mail content before I (the gmail user) had a chance to read it... did google violate my correspondent's privacy ?

Is sending an email to a gmail address an implied consent to have mail read and indexed for ad targeting ? Excluding necessary and really automated non-profit machine analysis such as white listing, anti-spam, virus, domain verification, stp check, etc.

Automated processing (for making sure it's delivered) of emails certainly doesn't imply scanning content to build a social graph and an ad profile.

Oletros2• 13 years ago

I wonder if google is allowed to scan mails it has received but the user hasn't yet opened

Well, this is how anti spam filter works

Google filing says Gmail users have no expectation of privacy

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