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Privacy Businesses Software The Almighty Buck The Internet Technology

Companies That Buy Data Derived From Scraping the Contents of Your Email Inbox (vice.com) 52

Posted by BeauHD from the email-snooping dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The popular Edison email app, which is in the top 100 productivity apps on the Apple app store, scrapes users' email inboxes and sells products based off that information to clients in the finance, travel, and e-Commerce sectors. The contents of Edison users' inboxes are of particular interest to companies who can buy the data to make better investment decisions, according to a J.P. Morgan document obtained by Motherboard. On its website Edison says that it does "process" users' emails, but some users did not know that when using the Edison app the company scrapes their inbox for profit. Motherboard has also obtained documentation that provides more specifics about how two other popular apps -- Cleanfox and Slice -- sell products based on users' emails to corporate clients.

Some of the companies listed in the J.P. Morgan document sell data sourced from "personal inboxes," the document adds. A spokesperson for J.P. Morgan Research, the part of the company that created the document, told Motherboard that the research "is intended for institutional clients." That document describes Edison as providing "consumer purchase metrics including brand loyalty, wallet share, purchase preferences, etc." The document adds that the "source" of the data is the "Edison Email App." On the product section of its website, Edison offers "Edison Trends" and "Trends Direct." The company says it can provide "Detailed behavior patterns to improve your customers' experience and business results." Edison is just one of several companies that offer free email apps which then sell anonymized or pseudonymized data derived from users' inboxes. Another company that mines inboxes called Foxintelligence has data that comes from users of the Cleanfox app, which tidies up users' inboxes. Some of the "examples of clients" mentioned in a confidential Foxintelligence presentation include PayPal, consulting giants Bain & Company, and McKinsey & Company.

"A spreadsheet containing data from Rakuten's Slice, an app that scrapes a user's inbox so they can better track packages or get their money back once a product goes down in price, contains the item that an app user bought from a specific brand, what they paid, and an unique identification code for each buyer," adds Motherboard. "An email obtained by Motherboard appeared to show the price for access to Rakuten data for one product category as over $100,000."
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Companies That Buy Data Derived From Scraping the Contents of Your Email Inbox More

Companies That Buy Data Derived From Scraping the Contents of Your Email Inbox

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  • I haven't even *read* TFS or TFA yet, and I can tell this one will be one to remember.

    I just dumped yahoo and google (well, more like left 'em to wither on the vine) for proton.

    Because of the scraping. And the breaches. And the scraping. And the scraping.

    I hate scrapes... either fucking cut me to the bone, or don't bother.

    • Yep. Is it any wonder that companies like Protonmail and Mullvad are highly successful right now?

      We've seen the web from day 0 to now, and we are not pleased.

    • I'm using protonmail, as well. I also purchased their VPN.

  • C'mon, what are people supposed to do, PAY for email? Shit, good private email is $3/month [rackspace.com]. Nobody could afford that!

    • "Private"... Really?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        Yup, really. When you pay for something, you have legal standing to sue if a contract is broken. That's kind of a basic tenant of US tort law. The inverse of that is why "free" email users are milked like cows.

        • you have legal standing to sue if a contract is broken.

          No loopholes for those federal/state/local fishing expeditions? And in case of a "breach", your class action should net you at least ten dollars

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DogDude ( 805747 )
            That's a heck of a lot better than the alternative.

            Of course, you could always try hosting your own, but that's not as simple as it used to be.

            • What alternative? You really have none if you wish to use regular email services. It's a closed market. That three dollars a month buys a lot less than you think, temporary obscurity is about it. For privacy, there is nothing but trust. With all that legal standing, I hope you have the time to get your pound of flesh. And like the freebies, tomorrow they might not even be there. I don't see any advantage in paying. There is no "privacy" on the WAN

              Use your own server and be blacklisted before you send your f

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by DogDude ( 805747 )
                For privacy, there is nothing but trust. With all that legal standing, I hope you have the time to get your pound of flesh

                I'll take my chances that that a reputable company doesn't want to be involved in a class action lawsuit. It sounds like your alternative is just not to use email at all?
              • Funny, mine isn't blacklisted. You need a real DNS domain with correct forward/reverse lookups + a SPF record. It is not that hard, but it IS way more work than signing up with a google type provider, and you need a static IP, so either pay extra to your ISP or rent a machine in the cloud with one. As Ben Franklin once said though, Freedom is not free.

    • Re:Pay for email? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @09:13PM (#59714260)

      This isn't about E-mail providers, although if you read some of their EULAs, they have unfettered access.

      This is about E-mail clients. The problem with Android is that some of the best clients (Touchdown) were bought out and destroyed, leaving clients that are often dubious at best, with people behind them who don't really care what malicious activities their apps do.

      I wonder what is a solid E-mail client for Android these days. K-9 Mail, perhaps?

      • Re:Pay for email? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @09:55PM (#59714372)
        I wouldn't touch Android with a 10 foot pole, quite honestly. If you're using a locked-down Google owned gadget, there's not really any point in using a secure email server, in my opinion.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          By that logic you certainly wouldn't go near an Apple locked down gadget either... So do you not use mobile devices at all?

          Or Pocophone or something?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DogDude ( 805747 )
            A Windows phone for email when I don't have a laptop handy, but usually a laptop. I doubt that Microsoft is mining my email, considering they've long since dropped the platform, and that was not something (I don't think) that they ever did. As soon as I can (I have urgent business stuff that requires constant access to email), I'll drop the Windows Phone and switch to a flip phone paid for with cash.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              You trust Microsoft not to scan your email but you don't trust Google when they say they stopped doing it in 2017?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by DogDude ( 805747 )
                That's correct. Google is an advertising company. Microsoft is not.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  Microsoft seem to have plenty of ads in Windows 10. And on Bing.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by DogDude ( 805747 )
                    I don't have time to go through some 10K's, but I'm fairly sure that Google makes close to 100% of their revenue from advertising and selling personal data. Microsoft makes the vast majority of their money from selling software and services. Microsoft isn't advertising directly to me (I have no way of seeing ads), but it's possible that they're harvesting my data and selling it, but I think that's very unlikely.

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                      I'm certain that Google doesn't sell personal data. If they did their advertising platform would be massively devalued as other companies get access to the same data that makes it effective.

                      It would be like Coke selling you the recipe instead of the can.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by DogDude ( 805747 )
                      Well, it gets tied in with cell phone data and credit card data somehow. So either they're buying that data and doing it themselves, or they're selling it and other people are doing it.

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                      That's never happened to me. Maybe it's only in the US? Any articles about it?

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by DogDude ( 805747 )
                      No, no articles. I just know because I'm an advertiser, and I can buy this info all day long. You can buy personal data chopped and sliced any way you want from data brokers. That being said, I don't buy it myself. I don't advertise with Google, so I am not as familiar with what they offer directly, but that data is clearly getting to these data brokers, somehow. So either Google is selling it, or people are stealing it and reselling it widely.

                      I wouldn't be surprised if all of this was only legal (not

                • "That's correct. Google is a gestapo company. Microsoft is also."

                  FTFY

        • The New Soviet American Man is eternally grateful to the beneficent Chinese proletariat that our glorious Free Living Lifestyle foreign-made national champeen Apple TOTALLY doesn't "share" data with the gestapo!! Totally!!!

      • "some of the best clients (Touchdown) were bought out and destroyed"

        Surveillance Valley oligopoly FTW!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, I pay around $20 for a pair of vservers for primary and secondary MTA at two different hosters and data-centers. They also serve my homepage, my domains and serve as off-site online-storage. I could probably put 1000 or so email accounts on these, so $3 should provide a nice profit for the operator.

  • Oh and double-plus boo on anyone using "Edison" (Score:3)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @09:09PM (#59714248)

    Really? Edison? A mail "client" named after one of the most notorious IP thieves in history?

    (If you're an Edisionian, Mssrs. Tesla, both Lumiers and Melies would love to have a few words with you. In the back. With teh doors and windows bolted.)

    I just looked at their page, they say it not quite up-front, but at least they're more open about it than Yahoo.

    Thing is this will scrape *all* your mail that you give it, regardless of source. They claim it only goes after automated commerical stuff like receipts, etc.

    Eh whatevs. Scrape is scrape. I had not heard about 'em til this article. I wonder if this was a slashvertisement in disguise.

    • I had not heard about 'em til this article. I wonder if this was a slashvertisement in disguise.

      I thought it was a PSA.

    • I wonder how they differentiate email "about subscriptions, sign-ups/cancellations, any account requests and confirmations, purchases, travel, reservations, event tickets, boarding passes, promotions, bills and package shipments, and similar transactions" from personal messages sent by a friend, a business associate, or a spouse. Must be pretty advanced AI.

      https://www.edison.tech/privacy [edison.tech]

      Commercial Messages are emails you receive or you auto-forward from businesses about subscriptions, sign-ups/cancellat

    • Imagine if the USPS "scraped" your snail mail by opening it and reading it's contents. For advertisement purposes of course. Or better yet, a private company intercepts it and does the same.

      The digital world is a funny place. E-mail is regarded as unimportant and privacy be damned, but if you upload copies of the same remixed/rebutchered ladeedah bullshit that the music industrial complex has been farting out their collective asses for the past 10 years, you might be sharing a cell with Bubba.

  • That sounds a lot like insider trading to me. Just because they arenâ(TM)t themselves inside the company, they are still trading based on âoematerially non publicâ information. It may also be stealing trade secrets, along with a bunch of other crimes.

    • "Insider trading" laws are a tool for stomping inconvenient bourgeoisie. This email snooping company was not inconvenient. The gestapo never stomps a company who worked with the gestapo.

  • Wow, where to begin?

    Corporate espionage
    Blackmail
    FBI
    CIA
    Insurance Companies for denying claims

      Oh yes, and it has such a classy name as "Edison" so naive users will think it's professional and not into all of that data mining stuff like the Clownratchetbitchshoutout(fictional example, I hope) e-mail app

  • Of course, you can't keep the government from getting your stuff, but it can be reduced--by not trusting an advertising company with your email!

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @02:42AM (#59714792)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Hey Donny, You know they hate you. You know your emails are not private. You now get why Clinton did her own thing, get they raided her servers. You need to deal with Edison. They got your back.

    • The Eurocapitalist Union. Proudly stomping innocent bystanders with the iron boot - while letting high level malefactors off scott free!!

  • Exchange emails with friends about the car that you do not intend to buy or holiday destination that you will not go to. Copy/paste will prob be good enough to fool the scraping s/ware.

    • 100K is chump change . Lawyers should buy the keyword MCAS from Boeing associates and employees. A 5% chance to find a smoking gun is easily worth it. Some employees and ex-engineers have got to be sloppy.
    • Pregnancy is the biggest money jackpot. Cars, house, medical, hospital, baby gear. My dog, Susie - well she got 8lb of expensive printed paper glossies and catalogs (sic).

    • Waste extravagant amounts of time on ineffective tactical resistance against an internal enemy with a currently-unbeatable strategic position!!

  • Or any other bigger provider.

    Ok, maybe not exactly. They go way further.

  • The last time these two clowns were together they screwed Nikola Tesla. Can't imagine what they'll do to everyone else. Wait, yes I can.

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