Google Halts Gmail Scanning for Education Apps Users

itwbennett (1594911) writes "Google will no longer scan the email messages of students and other school staff who use its Google Apps for Education suite, exempting about 30 million users from the chronically controversial practice for Gmail advertising. In addition, Google is removing the option for Apps for Education administrators to allow ads to be shown to their users. Until now, ads were turned off by default, but admins could turn on this feature at their discretion. A Google spokesperson called the move part of a 'continued evolution of our efforts to provide the best experience for our users, including students' and not a response to a recent lawsuit alleging that by scanning Gmail messages Google violated wiretapping laws and breached users' privacy."

Also business and gov't accounts

[QuasiSteve]

Google will also soon stop scanning the accounts of Google Apps customers with Business, Government and legacy accounts for the free version.

- http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/... [techcrunch.com]

Re:Scanning

[nblender]

Then use someone else.^1 It's not difficult.

Many schools now use Google apps for students. That includes Gmail, Drive, and productivity apps. My son is required to hand his assignments in via Google Drive and use Gmail to communicate with teachers and fellow students... So "use someone else" is a nice generalization but not always an option... That's why I'm happy to see this.

fwiw, personally, I have always run my own mailserver/webserver/dns.

Re:Scanning

[beezly]

I've been involved in negotiations with a couple of contracts relating to Google Apps for Enterprise/Education.

In each one, the "scanning" has been explicitly mentioned in the contract. In each one, scanning for the purposes of advertising has only happened if the domain administrator allows it to happen. If it is turned off, Google will not scan mail for the purposes of advertising content.

There are of course other reasons why google will scan your email. Spam/Antivirus filtering and indexing to enable search functionality are two that come to mind.

Basically, all Google have done is remove the domain administrators ability to allow ads, and I'm not aware of anyone I know who used Google Apps for Education/Enterprise with it turned on anyway.