6 ms·

I should probably get fitted for a tinfoil hat because my immediate reaction was, "Oh shit! They must've developed something now that tracks you better and is l

by jmull 9y ago

I should probably get fitted for a tinfoil hat because my immediate reaction was, "Oh shit! They must've developed something now that tracks you better and is less obvious."

josephjrobison 9y ago
Definitely, they probably realize they get better targeting by using demographic metrics like Facebook does - age, wealth, gender, interests, likes, etc - than they do by scanning email contents for keywords.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
Actually, you can buy some paint that blocks all RF signals. It's absurdly expensive but quite effective. There aren't many ways to get signals out of a room painted with the stuff. If you're thinking "Why not just build a faraday cage?" then you're thinking the right thing.
- problems 9y ago
  I've thought about turning my whole house into a faraday cage way too many times to be considered sane still.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    It's fun, isn't it? It's one of those things that costs way too much to be practical but you can't help but try to think of ways to get the cost down. Mini-SpaceX in a useless domain.
  - pythonaut_16 9y ago
    I've always thought that would be cool, then just have a fiber connection for communications and either air gap your main power or provide your own via solar and wind.
  - Overtonwindow 9y ago
    Ermmm we used the copper nanotube paint once on an office and, well, it sucked. Bad. Cell phones only worked in this small corner of the office, and wifi was chaotic. Something about signals can't get in, but they also can't get out, so they collide ...
    - swiley 9y ago
      I think the word you're looking for is "reflect."
      - Overtonwindow 9y ago
        Yes, thank you. Reflect. It created considerable interference.
- samstave 9y ago
  If Howard had known of this paint, then he wouldn't have had to put Mylar all over his house and look like a kook! Jimmy wouldn't have had to do so much to help him out... maybe he'd still be alive!
- c3534l 9y ago
  Isn't there RF-blocking wallets? Seems like something I'd probably buy if I had an identity worth stealing.
  - eridius 9y ago
    I have one of those and it's kind of a PITA. I actually didn't realize it blocked RF until after I bought it. It's annoying because I can't just tap my wallet on the MUNI gates or the card reader at work, I have to open up the damn thing and press the edge of the card poking out of the card holder against it and hope it works (sometimes it does, sometimes I have to pull out the card).
    - cookiecaper 9y ago
      I probably just have too much junk in my wallet, but I can't ever just tap the wallet against an NFC reader anyway. It either doesn't read anything or it reads one of the other low-power NFC cards contained (I think I have 3-4). For quick access to a single card maybe you can get a lanyard or one of those retracty thingies people wear around their belt loops?
    - eksemplar 9y ago
      Well, if I was doing security at your company, I'd probably want employee credentials to be visible at all times, which would also happen to take care of your problem.
      - emidln 9y ago
        Employee credentials should not be visible when the employee isn't inside a secured area. If you work at a site with a Security Officer, try inviting them out to lunch and not hiding your credentials. See if they care.
- QuantumGravy 9y ago
  > "Why not just build a faraday cage?" Then my very next thought is, "Who is going to notice my house-sized faraday cage, who are they going to tell, and what are those people going to do in turn?"
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Lan party.
- dom0 9y ago
  Actually RF shielding paint is very poor. Manufacturers advertise them with "99.5 %" or so, which equates a measly 20 dB. Additionally, correctly applying these is quite difficult, and incorrect application greatly diminishes the shielding. (You also need to cover everything, including ceiling and floor, not just the walls). Even when correctly applied, the attenuation is so weak, a cell phone will still work. Shielded facilities are built differently and are far more expensive than shielding paint. RF dead chambers are bloody expensive for a reason: you can't emulate them by pasting some paint on a wall.
  - gpm 9y ago
    > RF dead chambers are bloody expensive for a reason: you can't emulate them by pasting some paint on a wall. Couldn't you just stick yourself in a metal box (with a metal door that is careful to get a good seal)?
    - dom0 9y ago
      Well yeah, that's what those chambers are. Except it's a bit more complicated to do than "just" :)
    - fnj 9y ago
      How do you propose to breathe in there?
      - gpm 9y ago
        By opening the door when not in use. If you need continuous use, two rooms. One that acts as an "airlock" with an outer door that is open only when the door to the other room is closed. Battery operated fans and lights used as necessary. Note that the "inner room" might be as small as a ammo crate depending on your use case.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    One of my first jobs was building shielded boxes for a sensitive RF measurement setup. Containing the RF output from something like a laptop is hard. I lined the inside of the boxes with copper beryllium mesh (attached with glue, since nails become little antennas), soldered all the joints to ensure electrical continuity, and put a copper beryllium gasket all around the lid to make sure there was continuity when the box was closed.
eatbitseveryday 9y ago
My educated guess would be that given the proliferation of services offered by Google, it indeed has many more sources of information on each individual, and having email as one of them perhaps proves less beneficial today as it did when Gmail was first introduced. Now there is the Android OS which gives information about apps you use, locations, activities, and online searches, map queries, bookmarks, sentiments via G+, etc. So, it can disable auto-scanning of emails perhaps as a PR move (or, should I hope it is going to eventually evolve its email service to include encrypting emails, and this is one step in that direction??).
- icebraining 9y ago
  The article explains it plainly: they weren't getting the message to business people that Gmail on Google Apps isn't scanned despite free Gmail being, so they stopped scanning Gmail altogether.
  - eatbitseveryday 9y ago
    I agree - I read the article. But having many sources to feed the ads probably made the decision to announce universally that emails are no longer going to be scanned easier to do in the first place.
  - smeyer 9y ago
    Didn't they also get caught a couple of times scanning the email despite saying they weren't? I know there was a lawsuit alleging that they scanned the email of many university students after saying they wouldn't [0], which I think was settled for high 3 or low 4 figures per person, although I'm not sure (and wasn't a participant). [0] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/23/alumni-lawsuit-against-google/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/23/alumni-lawsuit-a...
  - dsp1234 9y ago
    stopped scanning Gmail altogether. Note that this is not what the article says. It says that they stopped scanning Gmail for ads, but does not say they stopped scanning email for non-ad purposes.
samstave 9y ago
Hah. I came here to basically say the same: "They have such a strong baseline of the predilections of their users, and by association with those they regularly communicate - by their overlapping interests and behaviors, googles ad dossier on any given user is complete enough to no longer read the drivel one sends to another to predict your future choices.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
losteric 9y ago
Perhaps you should ;) Google is a corporation, my immediate reaction was "They must've developed something more profitable" - and they have, they're continuing to compete with MS/AWS for business customers.
return0 9y ago
me too, but i doubt their technology can be stopped with tinfoil
Animats 9y ago
Exactly. From the article: "But instead of scanning a user’s email, the ads will now be targeted with other personal information Google already pulls from sources such as search and YouTube."
tambourine_man 9y ago
Same. I completed the headline in my head with "because they don't need to anymore".
AJ007 9y ago
It means their behavioral targeting now out earns contextual targeting, by quite a bit. This is just spin.
zeep 9y ago
That or they will have someone else read the emails for them... like the NSA. Also, all "cloud" emails older than 6 months don't require a warrant to be obtained [1]. 1. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article133340764.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress...
erikb 9y ago
The smartest reaction I've read so far. But if you learn to know the Director of Cloud, miss Greene, it gets less scary. She believes in a eat-or-be-eaten world as we live in today, an argument like energy friendly data centers would still be a thing. She might've just done it because it's the right thing to do. We must keep an open eye though for the moment when she gets fired and replaced by a shark, like when she got fired from VMWare.

by jmull 9y ago

I should probably get fitted for a tinfoil hat because my immediate reaction was, "Oh shit! They must've developed something now that tracks you better and is less obvious."

josephjrobison 9y ago

Definitely, they probably realize they get better targeting by using demographic metrics like Facebook does - age, wealth, gender, interests, likes, etc - than they do by scanning email contents for keywords.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Actually, you can buy some paint that blocks all RF signals. It's absurdly expensive but quite effective. There aren't many ways to get signals out of a room painted with the stuff. If you're thinking "Why not just build a faraday cage?" then you're thinking the right thing.

problems 9y ago
I've thought about turning my whole house into a faraday cage way too many times to be considered sane still.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  It's fun, isn't it? It's one of those things that costs way too much to be practical but you can't help but try to think of ways to get the cost down. Mini-SpaceX in a useless domain.
- pythonaut_16 9y ago
  I've always thought that would be cool, then just have a fiber connection for communications and either air gap your main power or provide your own via solar and wind.
- Overtonwindow 9y ago
  Ermmm we used the copper nanotube paint once on an office and, well, it sucked. Bad. Cell phones only worked in this small corner of the office, and wifi was chaotic. Something about signals can't get in, but they also can't get out, so they collide ...
  - swiley 9y ago
    I think the word you're looking for is "reflect."
    - Overtonwindow 9y ago
      Yes, thank you. Reflect. It created considerable interference.
samstave 9y ago
If Howard had known of this paint, then he wouldn't have had to put Mylar all over his house and look like a kook! Jimmy wouldn't have had to do so much to help him out... maybe he'd still be alive!
c3534l 9y ago
Isn't there RF-blocking wallets? Seems like something I'd probably buy if I had an identity worth stealing.
- eridius 9y ago
  I have one of those and it's kind of a PITA. I actually didn't realize it blocked RF until after I bought it. It's annoying because I can't just tap my wallet on the MUNI gates or the card reader at work, I have to open up the damn thing and press the edge of the card poking out of the card holder against it and hope it works (sometimes it does, sometimes I have to pull out the card).
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    I probably just have too much junk in my wallet, but I can't ever just tap the wallet against an NFC reader anyway. It either doesn't read anything or it reads one of the other low-power NFC cards contained (I think I have 3-4). For quick access to a single card maybe you can get a lanyard or one of those retracty thingies people wear around their belt loops?
  - eksemplar 9y ago
    Well, if I was doing security at your company, I'd probably want employee credentials to be visible at all times, which would also happen to take care of your problem.
    - emidln 9y ago
      Employee credentials should not be visible when the employee isn't inside a secured area. If you work at a site with a Security Officer, try inviting them out to lunch and not hiding your credentials. See if they care.
QuantumGravy 9y ago
> "Why not just build a faraday cage?" Then my very next thought is, "Who is going to notice my house-sized faraday cage, who are they going to tell, and what are those people going to do in turn?"
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Lan party.
dom0 9y ago
Actually RF shielding paint is very poor. Manufacturers advertise them with "99.5 %" or so, which equates a measly 20 dB. Additionally, correctly applying these is quite difficult, and incorrect application greatly diminishes the shielding. (You also need to cover everything, including ceiling and floor, not just the walls). Even when correctly applied, the attenuation is so weak, a cell phone will still work. Shielded facilities are built differently and are far more expensive than shielding paint. RF dead chambers are bloody expensive for a reason: you can't emulate them by pasting some paint on a wall.
- gpm 9y ago
  > RF dead chambers are bloody expensive for a reason: you can't emulate them by pasting some paint on a wall. Couldn't you just stick yourself in a metal box (with a metal door that is careful to get a good seal)?
  - dom0 9y ago
    Well yeah, that's what those chambers are. Except it's a bit more complicated to do than "just" :)
  - fnj 9y ago
    How do you propose to breathe in there?
    - gpm 9y ago
      By opening the door when not in use. If you need continuous use, two rooms. One that acts as an "airlock" with an outer door that is open only when the door to the other room is closed. Battery operated fans and lights used as necessary. Note that the "inner room" might be as small as a ammo crate depending on your use case.
- rayiner 9y ago
  One of my first jobs was building shielded boxes for a sensitive RF measurement setup. Containing the RF output from something like a laptop is hard. I lined the inside of the boxes with copper beryllium mesh (attached with glue, since nails become little antennas), soldered all the joints to ensure electrical continuity, and put a copper beryllium gasket all around the lid to make sure there was continuity when the box was closed.

eatbitseveryday 9y ago

My educated guess would be that given the proliferation of services offered by Google, it indeed has many more sources of information on each individual, and having email as one of them perhaps proves less beneficial today as it did when Gmail was first introduced. Now there is the Android OS which gives information about apps you use, locations, activities, and online searches, map queries, bookmarks, sentiments via G+, etc. So, it can disable auto-scanning of emails perhaps as a PR move (or, should I hope it is going to eventually evolve its email service to include encrypting emails, and this is one step in that direction??).

icebraining 9y ago
The article explains it plainly: they weren't getting the message to business people that Gmail on Google Apps isn't scanned despite free Gmail being, so they stopped scanning Gmail altogether.
- eatbitseveryday 9y ago
  I agree - I read the article. But having many sources to feed the ads probably made the decision to announce universally that emails are no longer going to be scanned easier to do in the first place.
- smeyer 9y ago
  Didn't they also get caught a couple of times scanning the email despite saying they weren't? I know there was a lawsuit alleging that they scanned the email of many university students after saying they wouldn't [0], which I think was settled for high 3 or low 4 figures per person, although I'm not sure (and wasn't a participant). [0] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/23/alumni-lawsuit-against-google/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/23/alumni-lawsuit-a...
- dsp1234 9y ago
  stopped scanning Gmail altogether. Note that this is not what the article says. It says that they stopped scanning Gmail for ads, but does not say they stopped scanning email for non-ad purposes.

samstave 9y ago

Hah. I came here to basically say the same: "They have such a strong baseline of the predilections of their users, and by association with those they regularly communicate - by their overlapping interests and behaviors, googles ad dossier on any given user is complete enough to no longer read the drivel one sends to another to predict your future choices.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

losteric 9y ago

Perhaps you should ;) Google is a corporation, my immediate reaction was "They must've developed something more profitable" - and they have, they're continuing to compete with MS/AWS for business customers.

return0 9y ago

me too, but i doubt their technology can be stopped with tinfoil

Animats 9y ago

Exactly. From the article: "But instead of scanning a user’s email, the ads will now be targeted with other personal information Google already pulls from sources such as search and YouTube."

tambourine_man 9y ago

Same. I completed the headline in my head with "because they don't need to anymore".

AJ007 9y ago

It means their behavioral targeting now out earns contextual targeting, by quite a bit. This is just spin.

zeep 9y ago

That or they will have someone else read the emails for them... like the NSA. Also, all "cloud" emails older than 6 months don't require a warrant to be obtained [1]. 1. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article133340764.html http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress...

erikb 9y ago

The smartest reaction I've read so far. But if you learn to know the Director of Cloud, miss Greene, it gets less scary. She believes in a eat-or-be-eaten world as we live in today, an argument like energy friendly data centers would still be a thing. She might've just done it because it's the right thing to do. We must keep an open eye though for the moment when she gets fired and replaced by a shark, like when she got fired from VMWare.