Privacy Complaint Against Google's GMail Service 447
CRCates writes "Privacy groups in the UK have filed a complaint against Google over its new Gmail service. Privacy groups said they were concerned about Google's ability to link a user's personal details, supplied in the Gmail registration process, to Web-surfing behaviour through the use of a single cookie for its search and mail services. "
How can they do this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How can they do this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Beta tests technical issue not privacy issue.
That's a narrow view of things. Beta tests are for ANY issues that arrise, whether they be usability or functionality. The likeliness for usability changes to occure as a result of beta testing are much lower than in alpha testing, but they are by no means excluded (they just piss of the developers more).
And the issue of privacy is certainly a usability issue.
Re:How can they do this? (Score:4, Insightful)
You pay money for your CPU and this service is free.
I take great exception to someone tracking me and having me pay for the technology. (I know, but let's ignore my ISP for the moment).
But if someone wants to provide a free service, then you get what you pay for. Be sure you read the terms of service. If you don't like it, use something else.
Intel put their tracking into something you paid $$ for. That's different.
Re:How can they do this? (Score:4, Insightful)
it's really simple.
If Intel implants a tracking number in the CPU's, buy AMD.
If A bios manufacturer hard-codes DRM into it's motherboards, don't buy those motherboards.
If (free) Gmail violates your privacy, don't use (free) Gmail.
what exactly is the problem?
The problem is when-
Re:How can they do this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Confident? That's a very dangerous assumption if you're that concerned about your privacy. I maintain quite a few corporate e-mail systems, and one of the biggest problems is convincing people to delete anything - even crap. It's not uncommon for the executives to have mailboxes which exceed 1GB.
I have every business email I have sent or received in the last six years. My assumption is that every email I send is more than likely still out there.
Don't want your messages to be readable by the 'wrong' people? Encrypt 'em real good, or don't use email.
"Don't send anything over email that you wouldn't want published on the front page of USA Today." [albion.com]
Re:How can they do this? (Score:3, Funny)
Or more like they signed an agreement that made sure they agreed to complete and total lack of anonymity and privacy.
Re:How can they do this? (Score:2)
Re:How can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is those pesky "inalienable" (or "unalienable" as one source writes it) rights: inalienable simply means that something can't be given away or sold -- alienated -- even if you want to give it away or sell it.
Just as you can't, regardless of contract, sell yourself into slavery in most countries, Google's GMail quite possibly violates European law (but not U.S. law, which protects privacy very little if at all).
So a contract is no defense, as contracts for illegal activities are unenforceable.
Erase the cookie (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to paranoia.
Not that simple (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that European privacy law is much more strict than US law, and by retaining a subscriber's email even after they have deleted it or cancelled their account Google is breaking those laws.
Huge difference.
Re:Not that simple (Score:5, Funny)
Cool. Looks like the rest of us won't have to compete with all the Europeans for cool gmail addresses.
Another option is that gmail just won't be available in Europe.
Re:Not that simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo! mail and every other ISP in the world dig through their backups when you quit and make sure they delete all copies of your mail? I'd be very, very, very surprised if they do.
Re:Not that simple (Score:3, Informative)
It makes the US Patriot act look like a walk in the park. gmail is just a distraction.. whilst we're bickering over that our 'privacy' is lost anyway.
One of its measures is the *mandatory* retention of all communications data within europe (inc. email, phone calls, mobile phone calls, faxes and internet usage). No idea how they're going to
Re:At least SOMEONE is concerned about this (Score:4, Insightful)
why are the two mutually exclusive? Why can't google make a good service, and be paid for providing that service?
Re:At least SOMEONE is concerned about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot is not a collective mind. You are not the only free thinker.
Re:At least SOMEONE is concerned about this (Score:5, Funny)
We are all free thinkers...
Re:At least SOMEONE is concerned about this (Score:3, Insightful)
So, if... we do question Google's future use of private information... we are... groupthinkers? And if we don't, we are... free thinkers! Got it. Thanks. Free is good, groupthink bad.
Slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength, up is down, we are saving Iraq for noble purposes...
Re:At least SOMEONE is concerned about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft actively tries to destroy companies that it thinks might interfere with their monopoly. Further, it uses its monopoly position to force deals upon other companies (for example, if you sold *any* PCs with Microsoft OSes, you had to pay a licensing fee even for those machines that did *not* have the Microsoft OS installed). Google has never done anything like this, AFAIK. Microsoft leverages its monopoly by requiring people who accept one piece to accept others (e.g. their EU case). Google offers people the *option* of using this service (and it is possible that they may not be able to offer the *option* in Europe if this is a real limitation; more likely, they will just tweak their service to bring it in line).
It's not making money/not making money. It's living honorably when you're at the top. Google traditionally has; Microsoft traditionally has not.
Re:Erase the cookie (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NSA (Score:3, Insightful)
"More than 27 million Americans have been victims of identity theft in the last five years, a survey released today by the Government estimated, including nearly 10 million in the last year alone. " (Source: NYTimes, September 3, 2003)
"According to the [2003 FTC] survey, 67 percent of the respondents said their credit card accounts had been misused in the past year. Another 19 percent said thieves had tapped int
I know (Score:2, Interesting)
in spam report. The same spam keeps coming
again and again.
Well, even if they wanted... They'd have to
hire at least the whole population of China.
Or invent a REAL artificial intelligence, which
itself has more value than all our Yahoo mails.
Hosted at Yahoo? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want to jump on the SlashThink wagon, but does anyone storing e-mails on a free remote server have an expectation of privacy about automated searches and indexing? After all, your e-mail has to be read by machine at some point or another, or it isn't an e-mail. And is should be backed up. The only thing I can see about this is Google stuck their foot firmly in their mouth about basically accepted industry practices.
Re:Erase the cookie (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Erase the cookie (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't do anything if I voluntarily sign into an account.
Heck, if Slashdot partnered with DoubleClick (and I didn't block ads), it'd be pretty easy to track whatever I do on the Web as well.
Don't use the service.
Doesn't mean it's not a legitimate complaint, though, about the service.
How do you know Yahoo! doesn't read all it's mail?
We don't, though it seems like the whole Yahoo Mail thing is at least as intrusive as Google -- and Yahoo tries to handle all manner of services as well.
I use Google on a "session cookies only" basis, and block ads, which makes it at least somewhat difficult to tie different online personas together.
I do have one (IMHO) legitimate privacy grievance with Google's operation. Google does not let you save preference options in the content of an URL -- language, results size, image content filtering, etc. It is technically possible (and really, pretty easy) to do so, but they prefer to force me to retain a permanent cookie on my system if I wish to use these features (or set the content each time I visit their site). There's a constant nag to give the degree of privacy that I *do* have, which I'm less than thrilled about. I consider search engine cookies pretty much unacceptable based on the sheer amount of data they hand out. You don't have to be searching for how to defraud your employer or for child porn to be uncomfortable with someone having a complete record of everything you're looking for. I view search engines as a tremendous data leak out of companies. Do you Google for things that you're doing research on, or companies that you might be doing business in, or areas/markets that you might be entering? That's sensitive data. What about having a "terrorist keyword red flag list"? Search engines would be an incredibly rich resource for fishing expeditions to find suspicious folks, simply because of the sheer amount of data involved. You think you ever mind wind up in politics? Do you want your opponent to ever be able to dig up the fact that you searched for images of a gay porn actor fifteen years ago? There's an awful lot of very nasty things that can be done with search engine data. Google, on the whole, might be currently playing nice, but that's no guarantee that they will do so in the future, post-IPO, when shareholders are demanding more profits and a partnership with DoubleClick could net Google a loooot of money...
Tit for Tat (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tit for Tat (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the current line of thought, particularly on the libertarian side of the Internet.
I will note, however, that at least in the United States we went ahead and outlawed indentured servitude, even though (a) it was usually entered into voluntarily (b) it often had a net benefit to the indentured party. Still, we felt that the moral and social cost of the "servitude" part was too high to allow individuals t
We have a winner (Score:3, Funny)
You just won silliest analogy on Slashdot for the day.
A coupon for a free "dinner for one" at the Country Kitchen Buffet is headed you way, and will arrive in a year or two.
Re:Tit for Tat (Score:4, Insightful)
"Seems to me, Mr. Jefferson, if England gives you the security of their navy, a little taxation without representation isn't too much to pay."
"Seems to me, Mr, Franklin, if we can give up a little liberty for security, that isn't too much to pay."
"Seems to me, Mr. Churchill, giving up 'a distant country of which we know nothing' in order to get 'peace in our time' isn't too much to pay"
Do you write no email that is personal enough that you'd object to Google looking through it in order to serve up ads?
If you're willing to give up your privacy for mere convenience, what else are you prepared to give up?
How much for your right to vote? A gigabyte of space? Two?
How much for that freedom of speech -- I mean, when did you last need that? And freedom of assembly, will you throw that in too, for say, three gigabytes?
You're not hiding anything in your email, so you're probably not hilding anything your house either -- let's install some free anti-crime cameras in your bedroom -- for your protection of course.
Did I miss the memo telling me that Americans had become so lazy we can't even get up off the couch to protect our privacy anymore?
Alles in Ordnung, Herr Reichsminister!
Re:Tit for Tat (Score:3, Insightful)
I can CHOOSE to give up my right to privacy in this matter to a company I trust without giving up my Right to Privacy in general, let alone my free speech, voting and assembly.
You seem to be strong on rights. What about Googol's right to offer a service for
Re:Tit for Tat (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you Yahoo? Do you notice their auto-quoting feature that adds the > brackets in different colors? Do you write no email that is personal enough that you'd object to Yahoo looking through it in order to serve up that feature?
The point, and the answer, is the same. There is no person reading your email at the company, merely an automated script, and it's looking for keywords. Addition
Re:Tit for Tat (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, they parse your email. That's part of SMTP (HELO, mcfly). They store it; that's part of webmail. They go through it; that's part of syntax highlighting. They index it; that's part of search capability. They may not wipe it out when you delete it; that's part of the cost of a distributed system.
Google isn't the only one that does ANY of this; all of t
Eternal cookie (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Eternal cookie (Score:2)
Two Cookies Would Fix it (Score:4, Funny)
These providers can't just do as they please... (Score:2, Interesting)
YES they can! it's called an eula...
Er... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Er... (Score:3, Insightful)
Example: Tivo. Tivo isn't required, but people got all up in arms because they captured info about what people watched (which is kind of a bullshit thing to do). They aren't exactly identifying YOU, just your data, so it's not REALLY an issue. Either way, it's still not cool to know that something you bought that is yours is sending data about the shit yo
Re:Er... (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is not that something bad is definitely going to happen as a result of Google's policy. The point is that this moves the _presumption_ from automatic assumption of privacy to an automatic assum
Lots of ways to get yourself in the GMail database (Score:5, Insightful)
Your boss: "I'm on the road - send me your status report IMMEDIATELY to yourboss@gmail.com"
Recruiter: "I have a job for you - send me your resume at somerecruiter@gmail.com..."
Re:Lots of ways to get yourself in the GMail datab (Score:3, Insightful)
Additionally, it won't actually be that easy to tell if you are sending to a gmail.com domain. For example I own my own domain and simply redirect email to my ISP email account rather than pay for email hosting. So if you send email to any of my email addresses (something @ mydomain.com) you have no idea where it is actually going. Not currently to any webmail service, but in the future, who knows?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So? (Score:3, Funny)
spy mac?
Re:So? (Score:3, Informative)
Now it functions very well as a replacement to
Re:Privacy policy is here (Score:3, Informative)
This happened as soon as I had to submit my reg form:
Warning: mail(): Could not execute mail delivery program '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i ' in
So it would seem registrations aren't really working on their end. Sorry but I wouldn't say SpyMac isn't looking like a viable alternative to something Google c
also in the BBC (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody's forcing you... (Score:5, Interesting)
All of this complaining and bickering for a service that is not yet released...
Deal (Score:3, Interesting)
No? Well maybe we could just REGULATE IT NOW BEFORE IT'S A FUCKING PROBLEM THEN.
Sorry, but I am sick to death of this 'well then don't use it then' argument. 'Complaining' has another name, and it's 'telling a company what the consumer wants.' In this case the geek user market wants better privacy, so why do you i
Re:Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do you get to decide unilaterally when the deal is off?
"Defending Google" here is defending the right to enter into agreements. You, apparently, want to be protected from your decisions by being able to change the terms of service if you don't like them at a later date and you want the force of law, through regulation, to enforce your preference.
You don't need regulation, you need to be responsible for your decisions.
Your concerns might be valid, I don't know. But, and I know you are sick to death of this, if you feel this way, "DON'T USE IT THEN". That would be a way of 'telling a company what the consumer wants'. But, you don't really want to tell a company what the consumer wants, you want to force the company to provide a service that you want.
Re:Nobody's forcing you... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish to register a complaint (Score:5, Funny)
I wish to complain about the post I am going to make half an hour from now. It is inflammatory and totally uncalled for.
Gmail - Opt-In (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't want to use Gmail, you have other options through your ISP, other free services, etc.
It just seems to me this is an extension of social networking, but from a business perspective. - target based advertising based on what you surf for based on your cookie.
It seems similar in a way to what Gnome's Nat Friedman wants to do with Dashboard. Based on your email & IM, having the desktop provide you with links to what you're talking about.
To me, the pro's at this point from what we know may outweight the cons - yes they'll target me with ad's based on my surfing behavior, but the ability to index and search my email rather than using "To" "From" and "Subject" headers is definitely a step forward in email management.
Re:Gmail - Opt-In (Score:2, Funny)
It's not like they hide this fact (Score:2, Redundant)
But either way, quit yer bitchin'!
Can I file a complaint against MS now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Innocent until proven guilty. When they start using this for an invasion of privacy, then you can complain, at this point they haven't even offered the service, how can you complain that they've invaded your privacy.
Besides, if you don't like it, don't create an account and go back to wearing your tinfoil hat. They aren't using strongarm tactics to force you to use their product.
Jamon.
Oh For The Love Of God (Score:3, Interesting)
But I suppose when Google is the only mail provider providing a gig of space, it's no wonder why privacy advocates are jumping up and down.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Google is a private company. They own the servers and the bandwidth. These privacy advocates can go jump as far as I'm concerned.
Why shouldn't google be able to link data? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want google using your data, don't give it to them. Personally, I'm happy for google to have all my data if it will improve my browsing and emailing experience, and that is my personal choice to make.
What people should be complaining about is insurance and credit card companies which buy incomplete and incorrect sets of data and judge your credit rating based on it (it's happened to me). Now thats dodgy.
Re:Why shouldn't google be able to link data? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's at least as likely. Look at the track record of Google versus the track record of the Govt. Which one would you rather play poker with?
Microsoft Exchange? (Score:5, Interesting)
snip
"If a person deletes an email, he should be confident that email is actually deleted," said Maurice Westerling, co-founder of Bits of Freedom, another privacy interest group, based in the Netherlands.
MS Exchange has settings for the email retention period. If you delete something from your mailbox in Outlook, then empty your Trash folder, it's effectively gone from your view and you've no way to retrieve it. It is however stored in Exchange for as long as the administrators wish to hang onto it (and that "deleted" email is, indeed, backed up and restorable).
If you shift-delete an object out of your Inbox, using that wonderful permanent-kill technique that the tech-savvy thinks protects and anonymizes their email... it's stored for the email retention period listed by the sysadmins, is backed up, and is restorable. It looks very dead to
(fyi, the only real way around this is to edit your Outlook client so that you can get the Recover Deleted Items option on every object in your inbox [as opposed to just the Recycle Bin], then habitually view -- and purge -- that information on a schedule that is more frequent than the one used for our backups. That'd work.)
Anyway, the shorter point is, this kind of thing happens. The reason is happens is liability. If a criminal organization is using Google's GMail system for planning a robbery, or if a terrorist group decides they want to attack rail systems in Europe and wants to do so by using random public terminals to sign into email accounts that someone else hosts, it's a problem. If law enforcement comes looking and Google has to say "Oh, sorry - we respect privacy so much that we absolutely and permanently delete all traces of all email the second you touch the delete object!", it will not be a pleasant thing. The investigators will not be happy.
Alternate question; do you really think that your email is permanently gone from Yahoo! and Hotmail?
Do you really think they can't restore to an arbitrary point in time?
Do you think they wouldn't turn that info over to law enforcement in a heartbeat if a court order came down?
Are the rules
Re:Microsoft Exchange? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft Exchange? (Score:2)
Do you think it would even take a court order? Hello Patriot Act...
Re:Microsoft Exchange? (Score:5, Informative)
It uses 64mb-chunks of disk space, and instead of erasing data from within the chunk, it just flags it as deleted, thereby not fragmenting the filesystem fantastically. That method means it's practically impossible to delete the email.
It has to be kept on their filesystem as the inbox is searchable, and 1gb large - raid arrays just wouldn't cope with that stress (and it'd take 3 days to search your mail). The filesystem is the real genius of google - their system is made of hundreds of terabytes of storage on a distributed system. Thousands of servers running redundantly. When one dies (with that many it's a regular occurance) it gets swapped out seamlessly. The processing on the data also requires huge bandwidth throughput.
To me, it looks like the google boys found a great use for their systems, but the very methods that make them great contradict local law in some areas they're selling in.
Oh, and the rules are that different in europe ;)
Re:Microsoft Exchange? (Score:3, Interesting)
With a system like that, you could implement a system where "deleted" chunks get purged or overwritten on some semi-regular basis.
Re:Microsoft Exchange? (Score:3, Informative)
It is possible that the grand parent poster did not get the motivation for making the users agree to allow google to maintain the data correct. However, his assertion that backups, checkpointing, caching and distributed storage cause privacy concerns is accura
Read it. (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't see anything in there about this particular topic, although there is a bit about the fact that they will be using cookies (natch).
Personally, I find it hard to be too concerned about this. My web-surfing patterns are already recorded in a "soft" way via my browser history and a much "harder" way via my ISP's access logs. I can go out of my way to use proxies and make it difficult to trace, etc, but it isn't like you can't figure out what my machine is doing (unless I'm doing some fairly advanced stuff).
The man on the street (Score:2)
It could be argued that this kind of data represents partial payment for the service. It's obviously very valuable as the companies are glad to offer certain cash-back offers in the form of rewards for it.
Off the top of my head, I also can
Americans, wake up! (Score:3, Informative)
One rule for some... (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be interesting to see the reaction on
Re:One rule for some... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One rule for some... (Score:2)
MS Sez Hailstorm To Play Nice With Others [slashdot.org]
Hailstorm: Open Web Services Controlled by Microsoft [slashdot.org]
MS Passport: "All Your Bits Are Belong To Us" [slashdot.org]
Nice (Score:2)
Um, what's the point? (Score:2)
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
Fighting initial reactions... (Score:2, Insightful)
Use two cookies (Score:2)
Also, the statements that mail may not be deleted is probably just a legal disclaimer in case it's not deleted immediately. What would be the point of keeping it -- it's just a legal timebomb to keep it around. But
Privacy Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
I would much rather that privacy groups spend their finite resources fighting the stuff we don't have the option of avoiding, Big Government and such.
Seems like any other organization, privacy groups have to justify their existence by creating problems where none exist.
Knee Jerk reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
I like Google Adwords. Given that advertising is an endemic part of life, and is not going to go away, Adwords is the way I want it. Let Google take all the advertising revenue with Adwords, and may the popup merchants go broke. If Google want to offer a paid-for non-Adwords service, I shall think about it - and probably not buy it.
As to keeping some of your email when you delete it - I don't think this is intentional. AFAICS Google has a "weak delete" policy - they try to recover deleted space, but if they don't recover it all, too bad - disks are cheap. So there may well be old copies of your emails hanging round. What the hell - they are not indexed, so it will take a deep search to find it. Do Yahoo, Hotmail & Co guarantee a destructive overwrite when they delete your mail? I doubt it - in which case they might have an old copy lying round on their disks.
So, privacy people, don't spoil what looks like it might (subject to confirmation, of course) be a useful, opt-in service because of arcane potential privacy problems.
Re:Knee Jerk reaction (Score:3, Insightful)
The term in question is,
On most filesystems, deleted files are not deleted completely, they remain physically on disk and, provided the now-free space has not been subsequently overwritten, could potentially be retrieved with appropriate tools. This is what Google means by "residual copies", and I wou
Every service "reads" your mail (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, wait - they already do that? (Note: at least, this was common the last time I bothered with webmail which was some time ago). Guess what - that's "reading" your mail as well. In fact, they're just changing your display - without changing the verbal contact of your message - to make it more convenient for you.
Isn't that also a (reaching, but legitimate) description of providing targetted advertising? I mean, how many times have people here on
As for the article's complaint, it seems to focus around the fact that when you "delete" an email, Google doesn't guarantee that it goes away immediately. Their message seems to be talking about cache updates though - if they were willing to amend it with a service guarantee that within xx hours your email would be deleted, that would probably do the trick. Of course, then people would be arguing that they needed to provide complete file-trashing (triple overwrite, etc) as well, even though your regular email client and ISPs email account probably don't do that.
I think its just a case of being too cautious in their terms of use. In this case, being too honest where the other major providers are being "honest enough," and not worrying about caches, et cetera. Of course, they may be planning to use your old email for nefarious purposes, but somehow I doubt it. Either way, they should clarify their statement.
MTA message size (Score:2)
Sending myself 500MB of MP3 files to have on the road comes to mind.
Email is not private (Score:5, Insightful)
moreover... (Score:2, Funny)
I've petitioned the town council to have her windows boarded up.
You get what you pay for (Score:4, Interesting)
April Fools (Score:3, Insightful)
Read the Google news release again:
The inspiration for Gmail came from a Google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services, recalled Larry Page, Google co-founder and president, Products. "She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them," Page said. "And when she's not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked, 'Can't you people fix this?'"
The idea that there could be a better way to handle email caught the attention of a Google engineer who thought it might be a good "20 percent time" project. (Google requires engineers to spend a day a week on projects that interest them, unrelated to their day jobs). Millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born.
Kinda fishy.
so don't use it (Score:2)
Unable to delete the past... (Score:3, Insightful)
They're all watching me (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure the first thing the hotmail staff do when they get into work on a morning is read all my mail to find out what a fascinating life I lead.
As soon as Bill Gates and his henchmen manage to reconcile the facts that I am a 104 year old man from Zimbabwe, lots of hot teens want to meet me and I have a massive interest in cable descramblers then I am sure they have some evil plan to oppress me.
Re:They're all watching me (Score:4, Funny)
To much tin foil in the air (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing, google is just upfront and honest about whats happening to your emails.
They have to "scan" through them to provide virus and spam protection.
They will use there distributed approach to searching to provide fast web based email services. This means your email could be on 100's of there servers at the same time. When you hit delete it might take a while for it to be removed from all systems.
Here a company steps forward and is 100% honest about what they are doing and we flame them.
No wonder we have to deal with lame support and excuses from companys every day.
An advantage of not using IE. (Score:3, Informative)
Also if you block all third party cookies, you much less crap to delete anyway.
Government-backed blocking of services? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was intrigued by the following statement in the article:
I live in Sweden. I don't know about Germany, but I have never heard of any government-backed agency in Sweden actually blocking access to foreign services for any reason, and in particular not for such a silly reason as sign-up procedures not compliant with Swedish law! If anyone can guess what the article author is referring to here, please let me know.
I have been trying for years to have my employer (a state university) merely consider blocking certain foreign ISPs from pouring junk mail over ourselves, but every suggested policy in that direction has either been rejected with a vague reference to the law prohibiting that, or not seen any response at all. I find it hard to believe that anybody in Swedish public administration would officially approve of blocking third-party traffic, let alone actually do it.
Crybabies (Score:4, Insightful)
Somebody call the whaaaaambulance!
First: If you read the EULA before you checked the box, you'd know about how they're going to use the info. So, it's not an invasion of your privacy. You told them they could do it! You 'signed the contract'.
Second: They're not trying to hide what they're doing AT ALL. They should be commended for that. It's stated right there on the main page.
Third: You should know by now that privacy doesn't exist. If you need to hide something, don't hide it on a cheapass server owned by someone else. Get your own co-located box and encrypt your mofo-email! PGP, baby. Or get a Hushmail account.
Fourth: It really is a genius revenue model. Minimally invasive. Text-ads are acceptable. Unlike Hotmail & Yahoo, Gmail won't have any annoying banner ads or pop-ups. That is awesome.
Damn you, Slashdot! (Score:3, Insightful)
Dumb slashdot gets me all worked up over nothing. Now granted, I suppose I could do things like, read beyond the headline, but, well, it's slashdot.
Anyway, yeah, privacy complaints, sure. For a service that nobody can use yet. You know, I'd like to register a privacy complaint for Duke Nukem Forver, there's some nasty DRM in that. And I think my sky car is bugged with a hidden camera.
You know, I honestly don't know why I'm even typing this crap. I mean, I'm trying to be funny I guess, but ever since they took the funny karma bonus away, you know, what's the point? The Slashdot FAQ tells me that I have to be smart, not just a smart ass. Well, sorry Taco, I don't know how to do that. So I, like the smartass I am, will now click the "Submit" button, and watch my karma cook!
Data Protection Act (Score:5, Informative)
Look, they aren't charging for the service, nor are they forcing you to use it.
Whether its free or not is irrelevant. In the UK, there is legislation (the so-called Data Protection Act [hmso.gov.uk] ) which places tight constraints on how personal data is archived and managed. If the Google mail service falls foul of this act, then it does not matter whether or not the service is free; it is still breaking the law.
Re:Data Protection Act (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Legal rights can usually be waived (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think that's the problem. The UK Data Protection Act requires that personal information be purged if the person in question requests it. Google seem to be saying that there is no assurance that this will happen. From Google's privacy policy [google.com] "[Google does
Re:Do it yourself (Score:2)
Re:Hello?! (Score:3, Insightful)
I have several credit cards attached to my frequent flier program. I get a couple more e-mails and a couple more snail mails a month, but for no additional effort on my part (except for skimming through a couple of offers each month), I get a few thousand extra frequent flier miles each year. It's not enough for a free flight on its own, but it can push me over the edge if I'm close enough.
They have all kinds of information on me -- spending habits, information on where I live and where I trav
Re:PGP anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
I got excited about this almost ten years ago. I installed PGP in my email client, made my keyring (or whatever it's called) and sent a few test messages to myself. After a couple of years in which time I never found anyone who even understood the idea, I gave up, never bothered to reinstall when I moved to a new PC.
Re:PGP anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)