[Cialug] Privacy and Gmail

cialug@cialug.org cialug@cialug.org
Sun, 03 Apr 2005 02:38:42 +0000


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Personally, I think it's all FUD.

Last year, some politician even proposed legislation because "Google will crawl
the message text."  Don't SPAM filters and Anti-virus software also crawl
e-mail?  They search for keywords too, so what's the difference?  They do it
under the "we're keeping you safe" umbrella.  Sure, they add security, but how
do the filters get lists of keywords to scan for?  Partially, they get them from
scanning e-mails.  Either e-mails someone has marked as SPAM, or ones the filter
suspects as bad based on the headers or patterns from previous bad e-mails.  So
because Google wants to make a buck off doing the same thing, that's a problem?
  
Following the link, there was another article that said this:
"If you send a photo to a Gmail account, it could last for many years. All you
can do is ask the recipient to delete it. Even if they agree to delete it, you
have no way of confirming this. And the worst part is that they also have no way
of confirming that the message or attachment they deleted is inaccessible to
technicians at Google."

The keyword in the first sentence is "could".  Yeah, it could last for many
years, and California could fall into the ocean tomorrow.  Of course, this
e-mail could stay on someone's server for many years also.  As for the last
sentence, I can't confirm that a message or attachment that's been deleted is
not accessible by Yahoo, or MSN, or MCHSI.  Hell, I have no way of confirming
that something I throw in the trash doesn't get searched by someone looking to
steal my identity.  Does that mean I should never put anything in the trash?

Of course, there are also people who think Google is a monopoly.  Last time I
checked, I can search via a number of different search engines, with more
popping up (and disappearing) every year.  How can that be a monopoly?

Should we be concerned about privacy?  Absolutely.  But I think there are much
bigger concerns out there than e-mail being scanned by Google.  Most people
don't know what gets tracked when you surf the internet.  If they did, they'd
probably stop surfing.

--
Tim W.





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From:    "Alan Maupin" <alan.maupin@mchsi.com>
To:    <cialug@cialug.org>
Subject:    [Cialug] Privacy and Gmail
Date:    Sat, 2 Apr 2005 22:06:22 +0000
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Anyone looked into these ideas about Gmail.

 

http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com/

 


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