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Frankly, I'd reverse the question: why are you surprised that people are surprised? You think everybody has time to read the dozens of pages of legalese in Goog

by blub 8y ago

Frankly, I'd reverse the question: why are you surprised that people are surprised? You think everybody has time to read the dozens of pages of legalese in Google's privacy policy, which anyway doesn't actually specify in which ways they abuse one's information? It also sounds like you need to organise your life a bit better. Google's notorious for their screw-ups and service closures, one day you might miss an important payment because they turned off the feature or you end up on the wrong side of an A/B test.

kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
"why are you surprised that people are surprised?" It'd be surprising if there wasn't a clear or direct causal path about how Google found that information. For example, imagine that you paid for a hotel room somewhere in Thailand by cash, didn't carry your phone with you at the time, didn't log in to any electronic device, and still Google inferred that you stayed there, THAT would be surprising. On the other hand, literally parsing out an email (AND even linking to it, you can click on the notifs to take you to the relevant email!!!) and showing you the result doesn't in any sense qualify as surprising.
- darkwater 8y ago
  It wouldn't be "surprising" if the mail parsing were done 100% client side, with a 100% certainty that no data is gonna be sent back to the mothership. But since it's done 100% server side I cannot honestly know what they are going to do with that data and knowledge.
BeetleB 8y ago
>You think everybody has time to read the dozens of pages of legalese in Google's privacy policy, which anyway doesn't actually specify in which ways they abuse one's information? No, but I do think that everyone who gets a service for free should by default assume they don't have much privacy. That is not a huge burden to assume.
- nullc 8y ago
  It is increasingly difficult to not use one of these "free" email services because of their aggressive blocking of any autonomously operated email servers.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    Has Fastmail ever been blocked? I've used a paid email provider since before Gmail existed. They've not been blocked. I know there are the occasional posts on HN about Gmail blocking their servers, but I doubt it's anywhere close to the norm.

by blub 8y ago

kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago

"why are you surprised that people are surprised?" It'd be surprising if there wasn't a clear or direct causal path about how Google found that information. For example, imagine that you paid for a hotel room somewhere in Thailand by cash, didn't carry your phone with you at the time, didn't log in to any electronic device, and still Google inferred that you stayed there, THAT would be surprising. On the other hand, literally parsing out an email (AND even linking to it, you can click on the notifs to take you to the relevant email!!!) and showing you the result doesn't in any sense qualify as surprising.

darkwater 8y ago
It wouldn't be "surprising" if the mail parsing were done 100% client side, with a 100% certainty that no data is gonna be sent back to the mothership. But since it's done 100% server side I cannot honestly know what they are going to do with that data and knowledge.

BeetleB 8y ago

>You think everybody has time to read the dozens of pages of legalese in Google's privacy policy, which anyway doesn't actually specify in which ways they abuse one's information? No, but I do think that everyone who gets a service for free should by default assume they don't have much privacy. That is not a huge burden to assume.

nullc 8y ago
It is increasingly difficult to not use one of these "free" email services because of their aggressive blocking of any autonomously operated email servers.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  Has Fastmail ever been blocked? I've used a paid email provider since before Gmail existed. They've not been blocked. I know there are the occasional posts on HN about Gmail blocking their servers, but I doubt it's anywhere close to the norm.