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Does Gmail's ToS forbid them from doing this? It would have to in order for it to be hypocritical. (it seems an important part of their argument.) Their argu

by pohl 17y ago

Does Gmail's ToS forbid them from doing this? It would have to in order for it to be hypocritical. (it seems an important part of their argument.) Their argument is B.S., of course, but I'm peevish about throwing that word around carelessly.

what 17y ago
5.3 ... You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services.
- pohl 17y ago
  Interesting. I wonder if this clause was in the GMail ToS when FB started doing this. The Contacts API (which FB probably uses today) has different terms, and appears to not conflict with this usage. So we would need to piece together a timeline. Probably not worth the effort.
  - what 17y ago
    Yeah, that effort could be put to something more productive :) ...I should get back to work.
  - streety 17y ago
    A while ago I did look into this. I can't remember what the situation was with Gmail at the time but I'm fairly sure that hotmail had a similar clause in their ToS whilst Facebook was actively enabling scraping.
- brown9-2 17y ago
  ...and this is why terms of services are so ridiculous to the point where they have practically no meaning anymore. Isn't it automated when the Gmail extension to Chrome tells me how many new messages I have, without me logging into gmail.com? Isn't it automated when emails to my Gmail account are synced automatically to my (non-Google) smartphone?
  - andreyf 17y ago
    First, full quote [1]: 5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services. Second, I imagine both of your examples use some for of API [2], which is clearly "the interface that is provided by Google". On the other hand, if your smartphone were to log into the GMail web-app pretending to be someone using a browser and scrape the HTML, it would, most likely, constitute a violation. 1. http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS 2. http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/ http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/
    - what 17y ago
      Yeah, I snipped the first line because I didn't think it applied to Facebook harvesting emails (they asked for your password). Sorry if it was misleading.
  - boredguy8 17y ago
    I'm willing to bet Google isn't going to sue itself.

by pohl 17y ago

what 17y ago

5.3 ... You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services.

pohl 17y ago
Interesting. I wonder if this clause was in the GMail ToS when FB started doing this. The Contacts API (which FB probably uses today) has different terms, and appears to not conflict with this usage. So we would need to piece together a timeline. Probably not worth the effort.
- what 17y ago
  Yeah, that effort could be put to something more productive :) ...I should get back to work.
- streety 17y ago
  A while ago I did look into this. I can't remember what the situation was with Gmail at the time but I'm fairly sure that hotmail had a similar clause in their ToS whilst Facebook was actively enabling scraping.
brown9-2 17y ago
...and this is why terms of services are so ridiculous to the point where they have practically no meaning anymore. Isn't it automated when the Gmail extension to Chrome tells me how many new messages I have, without me logging into gmail.com? Isn't it automated when emails to my Gmail account are synced automatically to my (non-Google) smartphone?
- andreyf 17y ago
  First, full quote [1]: 5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services. Second, I imagine both of your examples use some for of API [2], which is clearly "the interface that is provided by Google". On the other hand, if your smartphone were to log into the GMail web-app pretending to be someone using a browser and scrape the HTML, it would, most likely, constitute a violation. 1. http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS 2. http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/ http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/
  - what 17y ago
    Yeah, I snipped the first line because I didn't think it applied to Facebook harvesting emails (they asked for your password). Sorry if it was misleading.
- boredguy8 17y ago
  I'm willing to bet Google isn't going to sue itself.