Can Google Base Ads On E-mails Sent To Gmail Accounts? 171
concealment writes "A new lawsuit targets Google for reading e-mails to target ads, according to TechCrunch. But the issue isn't that Google is reading e-mails from registered users; rather, the company is using e-mails sent from other services to Google users to target ads as well. Google has gotten the side-eye a few times in the past for using e-mail content to serve context-based ads to its Gmail users. And for those Gmail users, Google's hide is covered: the terms of service explicitly state that users' e-mail content determines what ads they see."
Are you new? (Score:2, Offtopic)
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Re:Are you new? (Score:5, Funny)
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I believe a *Whoosh* is in order...
As to the topic at hand, I find it interesting that the question isn't "Should google be targeting non-subscriber email ads", but whether or not they should be looking at ANY email content.
At what point does it become ok for any personal email regardless of 'sender' to be used for targeted ads based on content?
How far is the open source community willing to go (sell themselves) in support of a company that has no interest in protecting any privacy?
Re:Are you new? (Score:5, Insightful)
As to the topic at hand, I find it interesting that the question isn't "Should google be targeting non-subscriber email ads", but whether or not they should be looking at ANY email content.
At what point does it become ok for any personal email regardless of 'sender' to be used for targeted ads based on content?
They explicitly say in their terms of service, since day 1, that they will serve ads based on your emails. If you don't like this, then you shouldn't have signed up for a gmail account.
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Re:Are you new? (Score:4, Insightful)
What he is saying is that when you give something to someone you no longer have control over it.
Re:Are you new? (Score:4, Insightful)
Same as if you hire someone to read all of your incoming mail - the sender of the mail need not be aware/agree to it being read. There is novel here.
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This would be the equivalent of your postman opening your mail stating that since you 'sent' it, it's no longer yours and therefore the United States Postal Service can just open and read it as it pleases.
not really, it's more like if you send a letter to a blind man, who has someone else open all his mail and read it to him. you never agreed to this other person reading the mail however, the blind man can grant authority to him to read it.
It doesn't matter what Google states in it's terms of use. Those are non-binding to a third party who signed no such agreement. The sender also has an expectation of privacy here.
they don't need to agree. the reciever of an e-mail is free to allow anyone they want to read it - without asking or even telling the sender. there's even a forward function in nearly every e-mail client/service. the only time this would be wrong is if the sender and recie
Evil (Score:1)
I knew there was an evil mega- corporation hiding in there.. catching bees with honey and what not.. free services.. ha! bait
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Feel free to use the paid version of Google's email service. ad-free.
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If it has only just been revealed to you that the free version of Gmail uses email to select targeted ads for the users, you don't belong here.
Yes, we know. (Score:1)
I don't think this surprises anyone.
Also, it's not like your emails are pored over by a human, it's just a computer system.
The main issue would be what the computer system "learns" and then tags onto your profile, or if it is anonymised should someone get hold of this learning data.
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How can it be both "anonymized" and persistently linked to your account at the same time?
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The companies supplying the ads are not given personal information ... it's not anonymous really, Google knows who you are.
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But it is still anonymous in that sense that it works without identifying you to any human.
Re:Yes, we know. (Score:4, Insightful)
As time goes on, that distinction will become decreasingly relevant.
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I don't think you should count on it not being a human. I don't recall anything specifically stating it in the agreement. The odds are low that a person would ever look at it, but for tweaking algorithms, etc, a human might look at this stuff. In general, a person could read your email in transit though, so I can't see getting too upset about it. As usual, if it's private, encrypt it.
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In general, a person could read your email in transit though, so I can't see getting too upset about it. As usual, if it's private, encrypt it.
Exactly. But your average person doesn't understand the difference between sending something plaintext and encrypted. I guess you could use the analogy of a postcard vs a letter in an envelope. If you don't want the information you are sending read by others would you put it on a post card? Anyone along the delivery route (mailbox, sorting facilities, devliverer etc) can easily read what's on it. If you put it in an envelope it's protected (and in the case of mail and encrypted email protected by law.. depe
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What's the US legislation on reading non-encrypted transmissions? Is there an expectation of privacy when you are shouting across the internet?
I believe that with email, there is an expectation of privacy. However, in a recent case a judge compared tweets directly to "shouting" and ruled there was no expectation of privacy.
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Well, I thought that much was obvious (that the data advertisers see, if any, is anonymous), but it is definitely not all anonymised otherwise there would be no way to link it back to your account.
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It is (almost) a 100% certainty that humans ARE looking at at least some slice of the data, because the computer algorithms didn't spring from the forehead of Jupiter. They were written and being tweaked by humans, based on real, actual, live user data.
Yes, of course (Score:2, Insightful)
Despite what disclaimer you may try to put on your email, when you send it, it belongs to the recipient. If they choose to let Google target ads based on it, that's their call.
Aren't the Damages a Little Insane? (Score:5, Insightful)
The lawsuit is on behalf of "all persons in the province of British Columbia who have sent e-mail to a Gmail account" and demands statutory damages for breach of copyright of $500 per e-mail that Google has used for ads. The lawsuit also seeks an injunction against Google's use of e-mails going forward. Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
$500 per e-mail used for ads? Am I the only person that finds that to be just a tad bit insane?
Wayne Plimmer of British Columbia has filed a class-action lawsuit against Google for using his e-mails for ads. Plimmer is not a Gmail user, but his concern is that Google is reading and using his e-mails to serve ads to Gmail readers too. Being a non-Gmail user, he never agreed to the terms of service, so the legality of what Google is doing seems murky.
Okay. I can see that but can you explain how $500 per e-mail for everyone in BC is just about right for how much damages this has caused you?
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Why should they be entitled to anything? They're also free to start their own ad-supported free email system, and if it is better than gmail (snicker snort) then they will surely have the same opportunity. Wake me up when gmail suppresses the ads in the email in some way other than not showing images by default (which it always informs you it's done.)
I Don't Follow Your Logic (Score:3)
Why should they be entitled to anything?
Well, I sympathize because the sender (not the recipient) never agreed to this e-mail introspection in any sort of ToS or anything with Google. And I feel like someone should be free to stand up their own e-mail server and have complete freedom from ads at some expense to themselves and some work if they so desire. That choice should always be there and it rubs me just a bit the wrong way that you can't do that if everyone else is using Google. Now, that said, I think in the end the ruling should go down
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And I feel like someone should be free to stand up their own e-mail server and have complete freedom from ads at some expense to themselves and some work if they so desire.
You can have freedom from ads. Gmail is not sending ads to non-users.
If I made a deal with some ad-seller that I'd forward all my mail to him, and he'd send me back some ads, how would you conclude that the ad-seller infringed? Shouldn't you be mad at me, not the ad-seller?
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Again, it only informs the user of the system, not a sender who may be sending e-mails that are then inspected by Google algorithms.
The sender is entitled to nothing whatsoever. The viewer is entitled to read their messages in a form that makes them happy, which Google apparently provides. Nobody along the way is entitled to display the full message, or read the full message. Now, if Google is suppressing part of the message in a way that the reader does not desire, and at the same time using part of the message to display targeted ads, there will be a problem, but since users desire the default suppression of images (which you can conf
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at the same time using part of the message to display targeted ads
The ads are displayed to the right of a message, not in line with it.
At least, I think that's how it works - I haven't seen an ad in gmail for the past 7 years.
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AFAIK in the American legal system there is no upper limit on damages so everyone claims a number close to infinity at first.
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AFAIK in the American legal system ...
British Columbia is in Canada, not America.
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Citation: Huffigton Post poll finds that 37% of Americans unable to locate America on map.
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You might have missed this part.
Editor's note: This post is a satire.
To be fair, it's very believable.
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British Columbia is in Canada, which is in America.
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Canada is in 'North America', not 'America'.
it's in both
The Americas (or America) [wikipedia.org][2][3][4] are lands in the Western Hemisphere that are also known as the New World. Comprising the continents of South America and North America
Definition of AMERICA [merriam-webster.com]
1. either continent (North America or S. America) of the western hemisphere
2. or the Americas the lands of the western hemisphere including North, Central, & S. America & the W. Indies
Would you also claim that Brazil is in 'America'?
Yes, and Argentina, which is where one half of my family comes from. They also claim that it is in America.
are Canada and Brazil located in the same continent?
No.
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So, Canada is in Europe? Or is it Asia?
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Ummm... you do realize that the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar, right?
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I'm not sure how he feels copyright applies either. The emails are not being copied, they're being read. Of course, he also seems to be a nutbar. If he sent me a piece of regular mail, I'm completely entitled to do what I want with it, including showing the content to another entity so that they can target ads for him.
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If he sent me a piece of regular mail, I'm completely entitled to do what I want with it, including showing the content to another entity ...
... to demand price matching on an advertisement?
Maybe its an end run to destroy that kind of retail interaction.
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Bullshit lawsuit obviously. If you feel that strongly about sending emails to gmail recipients, block it at your outbound MTA or you know what - don't send that email to gmail recipients.
That google is an ad supported company is well known. If you choose to interact with them on an ad supported platform, what did you think was going to happen? Sheesh.
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So what happens when I setup my email at IndustrialComplex@fakeaddress.com to be processed by gmail?
Not that I think the lawsuit is valid, but you can't really know that google will be handling the mail beforehand without some serious investigation going on.
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If you are sending emails out, shouldn't you take responsibility for what you are sending out and who you are sending it to?
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I think it's unreasonable for an email sender to have to research who handles the email for every domain in the world that they send email to, and keep up to date on which of the millions of email hosting companies engage in email scanning for advertising purposes. So no, I don't think the sender has to take responsibility for who runs the mail servers that his recipients use.
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For the last 20 years as far as I can tell it has been deemed unreasonable for any "Normal person" to be responsible for any part of their life when there are deep pockets somewhere near by.
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No, we just recognize that most people don't have the time or expertise to fully read and comprehend the TOS and various other agreements they are faced with every single day. Do you really think that the average person will check the domain name attached to every single email address they communicate with, go to that site, find and read the TOS and then decide if they want to reply? Is that a reasonable expectation?
In this instance I think Google is behaving acceptable, I just disagree with this idea that
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Unless the person setting their domain up does something unusual then you can tell it is being processed by google by looking at the MX records for the domain. If the user is just using GMail's ability to suck in email via POP or IMAP or is forwarding their mail to Google, then it would seem it would be the user who is sending your mail to Google who would be at fault.
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That's kind of my point though. It means you have to check the MX records of everyone you ever email just to ensure that it isn't being sent to be processed?
It's a bit of two front problem. We need to be able to communicate easily with people, and we need the ability to be secure in our communications. Checking the MX records for everyone violates that first aspect.
We need a system that behaves like, well mail. You send a letter TO someone, and if anyone screws with it or reads it enroute they can be pr
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I sort of assumed that when mail gets sent the MX records are checked anyway so that your email client knows where to deliver the message. I could be wrong on that though.
The issue in question seems to be the fact that the recipients have given permission to other parties (i.e. Google) to read the data. In this I would concede that there is nothing a sender can do to protect his/her data if the recipient is sharing it with others.
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Moving your domain to Apps is a paid move.
No ads.
Love it.
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Not necessarily. non-profits get to go for free (or used to).
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Well, clearly the $500 is excessive as compensation. But that's just the point: it isn't compensation. Typically statutory damages are set higher than compensatory damages would have been for the added punitive effect and, sometimes, to encourage enforcement through private lawsuits.
So, sure, we can debate whether $500 is fair, but it's beside the point to argue that it isn't fair because it overcompensates. It is supposed to overcompensate. The right question is whether it's fair on the grounds intended to
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And given how much a citizen, who has far less money, gets fined for sharing MP3s, I'd actually say $500 per email is not enough.
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Such a BS lawsuit.Hopefully Google will let him piss away his cash and the court will tell him where to get off.
Google is covered here. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Once the recipient receives his mails it belongs to him.
Before that, they belong to the sender, and google is crawling those emails before they are received by the sender (remember, received by google != received by the recipient, google is just a middleman).
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But here Google is not acting as a mere ISP. Google is the email service provider. No body can snoop on email till it is safely delivered to the mail
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what third party?
there are two parties involved in google reading the e-mail.
Google who are reading the e-mail.
and the Recipient. as we've aggreed the e-mail is his property, he is free to allow Google(or anyone) to read the e-mail.
Email is not secure (Score:5, Informative)
Email protocols are unsecured, sensitive mails should be encrypted.
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Adium and Pidgin are not email clients, AFAIK. Maybe you meant something like Thunderbird or Mutt.
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Totally agreed. There's not nearly as much email encryption as is justified.
But here's a thought experiment. Suppose you send someone an encrypted email. Suppose that other person has signed a contract in blood, that they promise they will send the decrypted plaintext of all the email they ever receive, to an ad company.
How would you know? And whether you knew or not, were you harmed by this? And assuming you were harmed, who harmed you?
I think the person who decides to share all their email, is the mo
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It's less about email and more about tracking and privacy.
You and I with Google accounts have signed up to give our first borns to the mighty mountain view company.
But there are people without, and for them, Google can easily be tracking them and using information gathered from Gmail users to help build up profiles of these non-Google users, who have never agreed to the Google ToS, or more improtantly, the Google Privacy Policy (which applies to Google users only).
Gmail is the target because it's probably t
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What I'm saying is, when I send out an unencrypted email open for anyone to snoop on I don't have expectations of privacy. The situation would be different if email protocols were encrypted an Google would take advantage of their position of being one end of the communication to read them.
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I haven't seen it written anywhere that Google is identifying the sender and using the contents of the sent e-mail to target ads at the sender/
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User who see the ads are using webmail, and webmail does not generally support GPG.
I'm gonna sue any anti-spam filter (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm gonna sue any anti-spam filter - because they ALL read the emails I've sent to other people who use them, without my permission, and may be targeting ads based on that.
And every antivirus software that integrates into Outlook.
And everything that might conceivably view the content of an email en-route (e.g. intermediate mail servers).
If the recipient chooses to use such software - that's up to them. If you send an email to them and they have agreed for Google to receive it on their behalf with their permission to read it, then that's not Google's problem.
It's like suing a courier firm that someone sent to your door to pick up a parcel, because they looked inside the package and the recipient that nominated the courier firm allowed them to.
so that explains it (Score:2)
huh - so thats why i keep seeing ads for cryptographic products and services.
Does it leak information between accounts? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have another concern with gmail, which is that it might be leaking ad information between gmail users.
By that I mean that if I'm corresponding with another gmail user, I get ads that are unrelated to anything we've discussed but which may be related to things that they are likely to have emailed or received emails about.
Just to give a trivial example, a friend has a pet. She has emailed me but never once mentioned the pet in email to me. I do not have any pets, nor have I mentioned them in my emails, but I now get ads for pet food. There are other examples that suggest my ads are based on my correspondents emails that weren't sent to me - that they are pulling in the ads based on both of our email histories.
I like it (Score:5, Interesting)
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You could have just told them to use adblock.
Also, non-gmail users who view email in plain text, will see that text.
Banksy on advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate advertising. I liked this quote from Banksy, a UK artist:
"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."
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He said better than I could the reason why I have been avoiding ads as much as I can in my daily life. I pay for Pandora so I don't get inserted ads in my music. I use ad-blockers on websites, and pay for the ad-free version if offered. I record television and fast-forward through the ads. Once you're used to avoiding the ads, it's interesting how much clearer things become, and how annoying it is if they can't be avoided in some other medium.
Advertisers can't control my eyeballs or ears.
People on slashdot make too big a deal about ads (Score:2)
People on slashdot need to realize that in general, they make way too big a deal about ads, and their views are certainly not shared by the general public, nor are they with the whole slashdot audience
I don't give a crap about ads, as long as they are unintrusive and let me keep working. The whole by-line of "Advertisers can't control my eyeballs or ears." is bull-crap to me, because personally I consider myself a bit more intelligent than the average monkey, and I am pretty sure that advertising does not i
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You don't think advertising impacts your purchasing process in any way whatsoever? I think you are underestimating the effectiveness and pervasiveness of marketing, my friend.
You've NEVER decided to see a movie based on a trailer? You've NEVER thought about a product that you heard about on the radio or saw on TV? You've NEVER seen an advertisement for a restaurant and thought, "Mmmm, that looks good."?
As Banksy's quote points out, the effects of advertising are subtle. Most of us are willing to live wi
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Hey, I didn't force you to block ads or anything. The discussion happened to be about ads, so I chimed in. View all the ads you want, as long as I can reasonably avoid them.
Ads? What ads? (Score:2)
I have never seen ads in my inbox. Apparently, evil google hasn't found a way to hijack imap.
They can target ads all they want, because I won't see them anyway. They won't even get pageview statistics, since I'm not using their obnoxious webmail interface. MWAHAHAHA!
Suit has no basis (Score:3)
It boils down to one question: Can I legally delegate reading and sorting my e-mail to my secretary/receptionist/administrative-assistant/etc.? That involves exactly the same situation, a third party reading the e-mail with the consent of the recipient. If it's legal, then Plimmer has no basis for his suit. There's a lot of basis for saying the networks and servers carrying the e-mail between the sender and the recipient can't go reading it, but there's not a lot of law restricting what the recipient can do or have done to/with mail and e-mail once they've received it. If you don't want the recipient letting others see the mail, you're going to have to have an agreement in place with them beforehand about that and your only recourse if they spread the mail around anyway will be against them for breach of that agreement. You won't have any recourse against any of the people they gave the mail to, because those people have no duty to you to not look at the recipient's mail (note: the recipient's mail, not yours, it ceased to be yours when you handed it over to the recipient).
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What precisely is different about my authorizing a third party to read all my mail, vs. my authorizing a third party to read all my mail?
gpg (Score:2)
gpg -c filename
#Enter passwd, upload, send. However, just be sure to occasionally send large chunks of random copy/pasted nonsense too. You could set up a crontab to send strange output to a specific text file, and use it as a base for all your "confuse" mails. Occasionally I copy/paste large bodies of text, run them through a weak substitution cipher, then email them.
- Making Hal stupid, one email at a time.
Nice... (Score:2)
By the same logic used to sue Google, spammers would now be entitled to damages from every anti-spam service and device in the world. At $500 per email, that's one hell of a payoff for those bastards.
Just sayin' (Score:3)
While watching television the other night, I was subjected to a commercial for kitty litter. After a moment's thought, I realized I have never seen such an ad online. In fact, on the rare occasion that I actually notice ads online, they tend to be for goods and/or services that are, in fact, of interest to me.
Personally, I'm pretty okay with targeted ads. But then, I don't give a rat's ass whether anybody reads my email.
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I like these ads (Score:2)
Gmail is the only one which does the right thing (Score:2)
I have always been surprised that people accept that services like hotmail and many others take the liberty to add advertisements on outgoing mails, without the senders knowledge. When you send a mail from a hotmail (or gmx etc) account, you actually don't know the exact content of the mail you are sending. The recipient will be spammed with an ad, which you have never seen and of course, not explicitly allowed.
I find this incredibly rude and totally inacceptable.
Google, on the other hand, sends your mails
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I've never seen ads or spam added to my incoming emails, nor from gmail, nor anywhere else.
Are you sure it's not an issue on your end?
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They do if they consider it a fair trade for the services they're getting in return. They're not really 'free'.
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Intelligent people consider the offer on hand, make sure they understand what is offered by both parties, and decide whether or not to agree to the terms.
For many people Google's email offering is an appealing win-win.
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If you do not see said net win for yourself, you are free to avoid that contract.
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Do intelligent people pose intelligent questions by misspelling words and botching punctuation?
It largely depends on how much they care and how much they have had to drink. Hint: Slashdot posts are not a master's thesis.
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he wrote, just before passing out on the keyboard.
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How about stop using Gmail? Seriously you think you are entitled to a right to privacy by volunteering to use Gmail? If you really care about the content of your email, set up your own email server.
You can't opt to use someone's services and then dictate how those services should be offered, it goes the other way around.
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Seriously, I don't lose anything by using gmail. Not one cent of currency, not one second wasted reading ads, and not the ability to encrypt messages I want to keep private.
That's right, I haven't seen an ad on gmail for 7 years. Why? Because I'm not an idiot.