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See all your purchases, subscriptions and reservations
- lunchables 8y agoAm I overreacting by seriously considering starting the process of migrating from gmail? It's not this singular incident of course, but just the continued pattern of behavior from Google for the last couple years. I really have lost all faith in them respecting their users.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y agoI did recently, and haven't missed it at all. Firefox, DDG, Fastmail, etc are all perfectly good enough and don't make me feel dirty.
- nimchimpsky 8y agobut their software is so slick.
- newnewpdro 8y agoNo, but you are reacting a very late.
- jhall1468 8y agoWhat do you mean by respect? Your privacy? Move to Fastmail if that's what your after. You are using a free service, because you are the product. That's not about respect, it's about your (lack) of understanding of the business relationship you entered. If you aren't comfortable with that, you're going to have to pay actual money.
- the_snooze 8y agoWhat assurances do you have that those paid services are actually respecting your privacy? It wasn’t that long ago that we found out that telecom companies were selling fine location data of all their paying customers. The reality is that irresponsibility and disrespect for users are rampant in the tech world. That’s entirely companies’ doing.
- ardy42 8y ago> What assurances do you have that those paid services are actually respecting your privacy? If you use a free service, you basically have assurances that they're not respecting your privacy. The probability of a paid service respecting your privacy is greater than zero, at least. Also, not all paid services are created equal. You still have to do more due diligence past just throwing money at someone who'll take it.
- n42 8y agoI did, and I found out it's actually not as hard as you would think. I think I even prefer FastMail's web client. Register your own domain, own the address, and then future migrations are way easier.
- trolleyhacker 8y agoProtonMail (free/paid) and Runbox (paid only, but reasonable) are a couple of other options. There's also the option of running your own server, but it seems deliverability is an issue.
- decentrality 8y agoApparently we're late to migrate, but I recently started the move to RainLoop: https://www.rainloop.net/ https://www.rainloop.net/ is actually much better software in my opinion, and is self-hosted unlike FastMail. Rainloop satisfies the need for polished, smooth, elegant, yet simple "feeling" interfaces like Gmail finally became. Handles multiple identities, multiple accounts, and contacts well; but no calendar. Way better than Zimbra webmail, though that does have Calendars. On my local machine, I still use RainLoop rather than a traditional email client, it's that good. ProtonMail, also mentioned, doesn't seem far off, but seems to lack the extra polish. It's in the neighborhood of RainLoop though, it would appear.
- pvg 8y agoWhat are you reacting to in this case? Gmail has always 'scraped' your email.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- olliej 8y agoI dropped Gmail years ago, but mostly because my only real reason for still having a google account at all was reader. By that point gmail had just become my spam bin These days I host my own anyway, and have a blargh@host mail account I use to sign up for things (typically blargh+thewebstie@host so I can track who is selling email addresses)
- kenhwang 8y agoIt's probably safe to assume Google reads all your emails and can probably target advertising off it one way or another. We can probably thank GDPR for forcing companies to disclose what they know about you.
- nomel 8y agoNo assumption needed, it's right in the terms of use. I'm surprised to see how surprised people are about this. The fact that they scrape email, for targeted ads and features has been known since 2004.
- halflings 8y agoSee my post in parent, this is nowhere in the terms of service.
- TrickyRick 8y agoAnd yet, in this case, it's probably enough for Google to disclose that they have your email, since the rest is data gathered from that which you don't really need to disclose under GDPR
- RL_Quine 8y agoThere's something to be said about intent there. The distinction between "we are a dumb store for images" and "we process all of your images, extract facial recognition data, and match them to landmarks" is stark, but usually undefined. In general I'd argue that "you agreed to this" in regards to a TOS is utter nonsense, as they always contain language and descriptions of a product in such a way that nobody can really understand what's going on. I'd have to spend weeks per year reading the TOS I'd implicitly agreed to, supposedly.
- halflings 8y agoFrom June 2017: "Google Will No Longer Scan Gmail for Ad Targeting" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html
- iwalsh 8y agoGoogle reads all Gmail messages, presumably for targeted advertising. In this case it looks like they're giving folks a UI to look at (some of) what they're gathering.
- petilon 8y agoI was shocked when I stumbled on this. All of my purchases, have been scraped from my emails, including every line item, where I purchased these items from and so on. If they are scraping this from my emails without my permission, what else are they scraping? What else does Google know about me? If everything in my emails is scraped by Google it is possible that they know more about me than I do about myself. Very scary. How will this be misused in the future? Who will have access to this in the future?
- nimchimpsky 8y agoShocked ? Really ? This is gmail, those targeted adverts don't get there by magic.
- jhall1468 8y ago> If they are scraping this from my emails without my permission, what else are they scraping? YOU GAVE THEM YOUR PERMISSION. Maybe, in the future, read the TOS and Privacy Policies rather than just pressing accept and acting offended when they do EXACTLY what they said they'd do. Had you done that, you'd also know exactly who has access to that information and, if you read when they notify you of policy updates, who will have access in the future. Why is this so hard to understand for people? Gmail is not free, you are paying with the information gleaned from it. If you aren't ok with that, start shelling out money.
- gdsdfe 8y agoHoly shit! It's something to think you know, it's another to see...
- amyjess 8y agoI'm amused by the "Estimated fulfillment by" dates on my DoorDash orders.
- bronco21016 8y agoIt’s not just online purchases either. Any merchant sending an emailed receipt is also scooped up.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lstamour 8y agoIf they’re not doing this for advertising alone, why can I only see my personal purchases and not company ones for G Suite logins? As a small business owner this kind of data would be a fantastic API resource and a significant value-add from Gmail... I suppose I could use the purchases label, but... it’s interesting they don’t aggregate and display it the same way... thus leading me to conclude that this page is purely to share data used for advertising purposes only, and G Suite accounts don’t have Gmail ads...
- romed 8y agoA very good feature of gmail’s extensive “email intelligence” that grew out of Inbox. How did you think the Purchases label worked? How did you think Google Now alerts you on your mobile when your packages are delivered? If this surprises you you’re going to be flabbergasted by how the Trips label works. Oh yeah also Gmail and Now work together to bring you those reminders to pay your bills.
- saagarjha 8y agoWhy can't this be done offline?
- smallnamespace 8y agoTo build offline, Google would still need access to (some subset) of data at some point to train the models / write the heuristics.
- saagarjha 8y agoSure, but why does it have to be my data? Can't they do it on data they already have, or maybe as their employees to run it (who presumably have much more control over how the data is actually used)?
- r00fus 8y agoExactly. Google is saying they "need the cloud" to make the prediction/action. They also require as grist for their mill: my data. I would much prefer some basic heuristics executed on-device using my data in a secured processing state. The hueristic-building could be in the cloud, but on datasets other than mine, and let me tweak those dials! Hell, I'd even pay for this feature.
- smallnamespace 8y agoIt's very unlikely that Google employees are going to be representative of Google's users as a whole (just look at the startups building niche products for Bay Area techies). Ditto if you only looked at data of users that opted in (maybe they're highly unrepresentative). That means the heuristics/models that get built would be a worse fit for you, as a user, although it sounds like that's a tradeoff that you'd like.
- fitzroy 8y agoI've always assumed they do this since they've recognized and surfaced flight and event information for years. I thought about switching my email to iCloud but I'm afraid Apple's going to change the domain yet again. And gmail is hella reliable. Google of old might have done something cool with this info and annotated the purchases with something like "14,391 people bought this for an average of $1.08 less" or "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" etc.
- iKevinShah 8y agoTo counter on the point of "Google of old might have done something cool with this info" This is very, VERY subjective. Even if Google did something like "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" there will be very similar posts detailing how 'Google reads your monthly payment data'.
- fitzroy 8y agoSure, but they're already reading your monthly payment data. My point was just that Google gets and (probably) analyzes aggregate payment information but the user only gets what they already know. If Google is sucking up all of that data, they could at least give some insights to users too. Now I'm curious to know if they're using this info to analyze competitor marketshare and/or set prices for competing services.
- lettergram 8y ago> Now I'm curious to know if they're using this info to analyze competitor marketshare and/or set prices for competing services. We already know they do... They'll even milk companies for money, bet against them, etc. It's clearly they should have their company broken up IMO (and I'm typically a libertarian) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18053819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18053819
- macintux 8y agoFastmail rocks. And Apple keeps the old domains, so my me.com email works fine. I never use icloud.com.
- browsercoin 8y agoat first I was disturbed by the title but upon arriving at that page I panicked.... I may be a financially illiterate person....fuck Pokerstars and their $500 spin & gos. I would've never seen this without having a comprehensive look at all my online purchases....I didn't realize how reckless I was with money....damn it
- beaner 8y agoI kind of like this. It's already in my email, which they host. I don't see why I should not want this feature, where they aggregate helpful information for me.
- ve55 8y agoYou can't think up a single reason why you might not want every purchase you've made in your entire life to be logged in a centralized database completely outside of your control and view which will be kept forever and shared with an unknowable amount of unknown powerful entities that do not care about your well-being? Some people are going to have a very rough time when reality finally strikes them with all of its might. Perhaps it won't be you, but it will happen.
- beaner 8y agoThey already have my email receipts, what's the difference? I use venmo - they have it too. My credit card companies are private companies. Where's the outrage regarding them? Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake news.
- ve55 8y ago>Google does not reveal my identity to partners; What you're spreading is fake news. We know for a fact data was at least shared with the NSA in the past. We also know Google complies with legal requests, could have a partial data breach in the future, could change terms or undergo some type of merger or acquisition which would include your data, etc. The point here is that it is completely outside of your control. If you want to give all of the control in your life to Google because they have treated you (mostly) well (so far), that's up to you. But as for myself and others, we will refrain because we can think up many reasons why it might not be a smart choice in the long run.
- beaner 8y agoYeah, but now you're changing the argument from selling data for profit to simply complying with the law. If Google complying with the law is something someone feels at-risk for, then I understand not choosing to use them. But that's really a lesson that goes for any centralized service.
- nguyendat 8y agoIs there anything else they scapes from my email but not public yet ?
- GeekyBear 8y agoIt's also likely that Google buys a copy of your credit card purchase history. >Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren’t purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-tracks-your-credit-card-purchases-and-connects-them-to-its-online-profile-of-you/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-tracks-... Finding that tidbit out was my own personal bridge too far.
- kps 8y agoThis is https://schema.org/ https://schema.org/ data.
- partiallypro 8y agoWhen I first read this was I was troubled, and I am certainly a Google critic, but it seems to specifically say this is for your usage only. It's not being used for their ad network or for them to see behavior. It's used in the same manner as tracking packages, etc. If or when they start using this for their own internal usage to see use purchasing behavior, and telling adwords customers what purchase/products were popular so they could convert, that's when I'd have a major problem with this. As it stands now, I don't see it as a major problem.
- krishanath 8y agoIf a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. So today you don't see a major problem. Even though every single purchase you made in your entire life is being logged in a central database that's out of your control. OK. You are slowly being brought to a boil, and you're not perceiving the danger.
- Aunche 8y agoThe legend of the frog being boiled slowly is actually completely false (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog). The frog will simply jump out when it notices that it gets too hot. Likewise, it's pretty easy to see the distinction between Google using information to help people vs. using information for profit.
- triodan 8y agoI appreciate knowing this and I don't fault Google for collecting it; I definitely can see the value in this, both for the customer and Google themselves. I just wish there's the option to erase the items there, or even better disable the collection entirely.
- cannonedhamster 8y agoJoin Google for Work and it disables most of this. You'll still get things like location data and time to leave, but email features such as Inbox, etc were not scanned at all while I was using them.
- tern 8y ago> You don't have any purchases Any idea why I might not see any purchases here?
- blihp 8y agoYou've done a good job of (inadvertently?) not providing Google with emails it knows how to scrape. Basically what they are doing is scraping common email layouts like Amazon order/delivery confirmations. If you don't have those well known confirmation formats arriving in your inbox, they have nothing to scrape.
- romed 8y agoMaybe you’ve never used Inbox? Or you’re using gmail for gsuite or .edu? There are lots of features that are only enabled for gmail.com accounts, and there are many features that got triggered by using Inbox even if you later changed back to gmail.
- partiallypro 8y agoIf you're using GSuite, it doesn't display purchases.
- tern 8y agoThat's it, thanks!
- hclalpha 8y agoKnown to anyone using Google inbox...
- Mac_McMeans 8y agoI use PrismCipher to protect sensitive messages. I can't stop Google from reading my email, but I sure can stop them from getting anything out of it. I don't want to switch to another provider because as fitzroy stated, it's "hella reliable."
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 40acres 8y agoThis is one of my favorite features of Inbox. Sounds like more transparency is required but overall this is pretty nice to have.
- ndnxhs 8y agoIts nice data for me to have and creepy data for google to have. In an ideal world it would be processed locally.
- aviv 8y agoIs there actually anyone on HN that is surprised by this?
- boomboomsubban 8y agoHasn't gmail done this since their 2004 beta release? There was even opposition to it at the time. https://www.privacyrights.org/blog/thirty-one-privacy-and-civil-liberties-organizations-urge-google-suspend-gmail https://www.privacyrights.org/blog/thirty-one-privacy-and-ci...
- expertentipp 8y agoDuh, they host your email and are easily the best functionality- and reliability-wise email provider. For free, yet the money has to come from somewhere. It's hard to find paying email provider matching the Gmail.
- cromwellian 8y agoIf you used Inbox, it also categorizes flights, hotels, calendar entries, restaurant reservations, bills, newsletters, forums, social media updates, and a host of other useful functions, extracting out entities. The Finances, Purchases, and Trips bundles are extremely useful. This information isn't solely surfaceable in Inbox or Gmail UI, go to any Google Search box and type "my purchases" or "my flights" or "my reservations".
- njn 8y agoNews at 11.
- nkassis 8y agoTime for Amazon to launch an email service I guess.
- nitins 8y agoI like this feature. It has always been there on Inbox.
- geekrax 8y agoJust one perspective: When it comes to scraping data and storing in single entity (Google servers), it's more about powering the ecosystem than a single client or the UI. Google doesn't just live in a single client. As a user (by giving up my privacyto Google), I can ask my Google home how my day is while getting ready for work. I can see the status of my flight tomorrow in my Google app (or Google home screen in Android) without a single search - just because it parsed my email with itinerary. Same way, I can see status for my FedEx package right there just because they violeted my privacy and scraped when I purchased something. Imagine how much friction it'd require to setup such devices if everything was processed on client side or required explicit opt-in before accessing the info. Of course as a side effect, I get advertisements of standing desk even a month after buying one, but probably the alternative would be to pay for all these AI and assist? Again, just a user's perspective.
- ardy42 8y ago> Imagine how much friction it'd require to setup such devices if everything was processed on client side or required explicit opt-in before accessing the info. Gmail's basically parsing emails, so I don't think it would be that hard to do client-side if there was a community effort to create and maintain the parsers. That's certainly doable, because ad-block lists have some of the same characteristics and are community maintained.
- jonnytran 8y agoWhy has the title and link of this post changed? It used to link here: https://myaccount.google.com/purchases https://myaccount.google.com/purchases The title used to be, "Google reads your Gmail and scrapes your purchases". It also was #1 on the front page of HN. Now it's gone. What happened? Conspiracy theories welcome :-)
- binjo 8y agoI really thought this was obvious by now. If the data wasn't being scraped and analysed somewhere how would the categorisation of 'Purchases' work as well as all those payment reminders?