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OK, this brings up a question I've been meaning to ask tech-savvy Gmail users. The typical Hacker News reader is surely aware of the extent that Gmail is profil

OK, this brings up a question I've been meaning to ask tech-savvy Gmail users. The typical Hacker News reader is surely aware of the extent that Gmail is profiling you and surveilling your email. The cost of a commercial privacy-centric email provider is about $50 per year, a trivial amount for the average US-based Hacker News reader, much less than going to a sports event or concert. So why are so many technically-sophisticated and privacy aware people, even here on Hacker News, still using Gmail? I'm not convinced that it's due to Gmail's superior spam filtering. It's been my experience that the spam filtering on commercial email providers work just fine.

aantix 7y ago
I’m privacy aware, but I just don’t think I care. So many things that I’m suppose to be outraged about. I’m exhausted.
- cantrevealname 7y ago
  > I’m exhausted. Your answer makes a lot of sense to me. I too am exhausted by the number of creeping privacy violations I can do nothing about. (But switching email providers is something I do have control over.)
  - misterman0 7y ago
    I'm totally exhausted too. This morning I googled "migrate from chrome to firefox" because I remembered reading on HN a couple of days ago about a promotional site Mozilla had launched in the spirit of their old "getfirefox.com" campaign but this time it was about how to make the jump from chrome to FF. I needed Mozilla to motivate me to make the jump. I mean, FF is already on all of my PCs. I just can't seem to bring myself to actually make the jump. I just can't convince myself to marry yet another browser, as you do when you sign in and sync to the cloud. It's out of the frying pan into the fire, to me. Google gave me an instant answer on how to migrate from FF to chrome. I immediately closed my default browser, went and played some Tetris on our Sega arcade machine, and tried to forget I'm both extremely privacy aware and extremely disappointed in Google. Edited (spelling)
    - jsnell 7y ago
      Are you sure that was the exact query? Of course it's hard to say anything conclusive these days, but I can't reproduce your results with that exact query. The featured result [0] is for migrating to firefox, and so are all the normal results, all the suggested searches, and two out of the three video results. I can only see mixed results with queries like "migrate chrome firefox" or "migrate firefox chrome", which have no disambiguation about the direction of the migration at all. For those, the top result I see is migrating to Chrome and the second is migrating from Chrome. Given the ambiguity, that hardly seems malicious. [0] https://www.howtogeek.com/333047/how-to-migrate-all-your-data-from-chrome-to-firefox/ https://www.howtogeek.com/333047/how-to-migrate-all-your-dat...
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  With regard to Gmail, privacy might be the wrong metric to be concerned about anyway. Gmail can unilaterally lock you out of your email at any moment, immediately and forever, with no recourse nor consumer protections. That, for me, would be mighty annoying.
  - shereadsthenews 7y ago
    Every email provider can do this to you.
    - StuntPope 7y ago
      If you run email at your own domain, and sync it offsite even if you use hosted IMAP, you can always switch your MX and be back in control of your email.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      Some email providers claim to offer support, sold even have a phone number you can call.
- Frondo 7y ago
  For me, the issue has a couple of layers: First, there's little I can do about it, even if I'm not on gmail. So many people are, so Google has copies of most of my email even if I'm not using them. Second, this is a small wrong in the world; I've literally never heard of political violence linked to someone's use of Gmail, while I have heard this about a variety of other services. It's a little disturbing, but there are "evil corp" things much closer to home that I reserve my change-the-world energy for. Third, on a basic level, there's nothing wrong with this service, or any of the various privacy-invading services. The problem is that, right now, the mega-corps are all so unrestricted from passing my data around to one another, building giant profiles. What I want is to be able to share my data freely with anyone, but for them to be heavily restricted from sharing it, under serious penalty, until I say it's okay. I want a cultural and legal shift around privacy to take place, so that companies have to respect my ownership of my data as a primacy, but then I want them to be able to do whatever cool stuff they want with it. Location sharing? That shit's awesome. If you're meeting up with people in a new city, there's no better way to do it. But my telco and mapping providers had better be under corporate death penalty not to share that with anyone, under any circumstances. That's the world I want, not one where these things don't exist, just one where I and every other user of the tools is in charge of what we do with them.
  - andybak 7y ago
    > What I want is to be able to share my data freely with anyone, but for them to be heavily restricted from sharing it, under serious penalty I think you pretty much described the GDPR there (or at least part of it)
the_jeremy 7y ago
They aren't as good at the basics or the extensions. I have my own email provider, and I just set it to forward to gmail. Custom filters and sorting with colored labels as they arrive in my inbox. Adding things automatically to my calendar. Better spam filtering.
muro 7y ago
1. Everyone already has my Gmail address 2. I actually like those features (e.g. adding flights to calendar) 3. I don't see it as much of a privacy problem
- craftyguy 7y ago
  1. No, not everyone has a gmail account. 2. I actually don't like those "features". 3. I definitely do see it as a major privacy problem.
  - muro 7y ago
    1. That's a different statement than I made 2 & 3. You are welcome to your opinion too.
Radle 7y ago
Because that story is bollocks I don't want to be unfriendly, but part of your comment is bollocks, too. "the extent that Gmail is profiling you and surveilling your email" - A serious description of the fundamental technology that a spam filter uses. The purchase history that google shows me clearly says that google is only showing this to me, this information will not be shared. See screenshot from my account https://ibb.co/jhkCSjK https://ibb.co/jhkCSjK Well the truth is, most companies are a lot more hostile with your data than google. Privacy centric services are incredible dangerous. We have seen that VPNs always log your data. (And thereby are completely redundant) You remember lulzsec? https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/lulzsec-hacker-exposed-service-he-thought-would-hide-him/337545/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/lulzs... Overall the purchases page is only there to give me a better overview over my data. And I am fine with google having my data. Most companies are less trustworthy than google. Splitting my data over dozens of other services is a guarantee that one of them will sell my data to the outside. The price of using google is that google gets free data from you. The pro is that this data is top secure and only used to serve targeted ads and confirm to subpoenas. Most companies are just going to sell your data to anyone willing to pay for it, including bounty killers. https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/8/18174024/att-sprint-t-mobile-scandal-phone-location-tracking-black-market-bounty-hunters-privacy-securus https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/8/18174024/att-sprint-t-mobi... So yes. Google isn't good, but I can clearly tell what they are doing and what they are not doing. I trust google not to sell my data because they can get more value out of my data using it themselves and I actually don't have a problem with (reasonable) targeted ads.
- cantrevealname 7y ago
  > description of the fundamental technology that a spam filter uses Privacy-centric email providers don't retain any data from your emails after scanning for spam. Gmail does, and in unexpected places that I keep discovering and hearing about, and as far as I know, there is no Gmail switch to say, "Do the spam filtering but don't keep any data". > google is only showing this to me, this information will not be shared They can easily change their own policy on that, and they regularly do change their policy. Also, as you already mentioned, they'll share it after a subpoena. I don't want them to have or keep that data at all.
barberousse 7y ago
Dunno about that spam claim, stuff gets through Fastmail's filters
lern_too_spel 7y ago
Because collecting data and sharing data are the only actions that affect privacy. Gmail neither collects nor shares any more data than any other email provider. The only difference is that it provides additional value on top of that data through better spam filtering and assistant functionality, neither of which affect the privacy implications of the service.
dageshi 7y ago
People value utility and cost over privacy. They say they don't, but their continued usage of Gmail says they do. That and the fact is most people I think are not vehemently against ads unless they're really annoying.

aantix 7y ago

I’m privacy aware, but I just don’t think I care. So many things that I’m suppose to be outraged about. I’m exhausted.

cantrevealname 7y ago
> I’m exhausted. Your answer makes a lot of sense to me. I too am exhausted by the number of creeping privacy violations I can do nothing about. (But switching email providers is something I do have control over.)
- misterman0 7y ago
  I'm totally exhausted too. This morning I googled "migrate from chrome to firefox" because I remembered reading on HN a couple of days ago about a promotional site Mozilla had launched in the spirit of their old "getfirefox.com" campaign but this time it was about how to make the jump from chrome to FF. I needed Mozilla to motivate me to make the jump. I mean, FF is already on all of my PCs. I just can't seem to bring myself to actually make the jump. I just can't convince myself to marry yet another browser, as you do when you sign in and sync to the cloud. It's out of the frying pan into the fire, to me. Google gave me an instant answer on how to migrate from FF to chrome. I immediately closed my default browser, went and played some Tetris on our Sega arcade machine, and tried to forget I'm both extremely privacy aware and extremely disappointed in Google. Edited (spelling)
  - jsnell 7y ago
    Are you sure that was the exact query? Of course it's hard to say anything conclusive these days, but I can't reproduce your results with that exact query. The featured result [0] is for migrating to firefox, and so are all the normal results, all the suggested searches, and two out of the three video results. I can only see mixed results with queries like "migrate chrome firefox" or "migrate firefox chrome", which have no disambiguation about the direction of the migration at all. For those, the top result I see is migrating to Chrome and the second is migrating from Chrome. Given the ambiguity, that hardly seems malicious. [0] https://www.howtogeek.com/333047/how-to-migrate-all-your-data-from-chrome-to-firefox/ https://www.howtogeek.com/333047/how-to-migrate-all-your-dat...
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
With regard to Gmail, privacy might be the wrong metric to be concerned about anyway. Gmail can unilaterally lock you out of your email at any moment, immediately and forever, with no recourse nor consumer protections. That, for me, would be mighty annoying.
- shereadsthenews 7y ago
  Every email provider can do this to you.
  - StuntPope 7y ago
    If you run email at your own domain, and sync it offsite even if you use hosted IMAP, you can always switch your MX and be back in control of your email.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    Some email providers claim to offer support, sold even have a phone number you can call.
Frondo 7y ago
For me, the issue has a couple of layers: First, there's little I can do about it, even if I'm not on gmail. So many people are, so Google has copies of most of my email even if I'm not using them. Second, this is a small wrong in the world; I've literally never heard of political violence linked to someone's use of Gmail, while I have heard this about a variety of other services. It's a little disturbing, but there are "evil corp" things much closer to home that I reserve my change-the-world energy for. Third, on a basic level, there's nothing wrong with this service, or any of the various privacy-invading services. The problem is that, right now, the mega-corps are all so unrestricted from passing my data around to one another, building giant profiles. What I want is to be able to share my data freely with anyone, but for them to be heavily restricted from sharing it, under serious penalty, until I say it's okay. I want a cultural and legal shift around privacy to take place, so that companies have to respect my ownership of my data as a primacy, but then I want them to be able to do whatever cool stuff they want with it. Location sharing? That shit's awesome. If you're meeting up with people in a new city, there's no better way to do it. But my telco and mapping providers had better be under corporate death penalty not to share that with anyone, under any circumstances. That's the world I want, not one where these things don't exist, just one where I and every other user of the tools is in charge of what we do with them.
- andybak 7y ago
  > What I want is to be able to share my data freely with anyone, but for them to be heavily restricted from sharing it, under serious penalty I think you pretty much described the GDPR there (or at least part of it)

the_jeremy 7y ago

They aren't as good at the basics or the extensions. I have my own email provider, and I just set it to forward to gmail. Custom filters and sorting with colored labels as they arrive in my inbox. Adding things automatically to my calendar. Better spam filtering.

muro 7y ago

1. Everyone already has my Gmail address 2. I actually like those features (e.g. adding flights to calendar) 3. I don't see it as much of a privacy problem

craftyguy 7y ago
1. No, not everyone has a gmail account. 2. I actually don't like those "features". 3. I definitely do see it as a major privacy problem.
- muro 7y ago
  1. That's a different statement than I made 2 & 3. You are welcome to your opinion too.

Radle 7y ago

Because that story is bollocks I don't want to be unfriendly, but part of your comment is bollocks, too. "the extent that Gmail is profiling you and surveilling your email" - A serious description of the fundamental technology that a spam filter uses. The purchase history that google shows me clearly says that google is only showing this to me, this information will not be shared. See screenshot from my account https://ibb.co/jhkCSjK https://ibb.co/jhkCSjK Well the truth is, most companies are a lot more hostile with your data than google. Privacy centric services are incredible dangerous. We have seen that VPNs always log your data. (And thereby are completely redundant) You remember lulzsec? https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/lulzsec-hacker-exposed-service-he-thought-would-hide-him/337545/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/lulzs... Overall the purchases page is only there to give me a better overview over my data. And I am fine with google having my data. Most companies are less trustworthy than google. Splitting my data over dozens of other services is a guarantee that one of them will sell my data to the outside. The price of using google is that google gets free data from you. The pro is that this data is top secure and only used to serve targeted ads and confirm to subpoenas. Most companies are just going to sell your data to anyone willing to pay for it, including bounty killers. https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/8/18174024/att-sprint-t-mobile-scandal-phone-location-tracking-black-market-bounty-hunters-privacy-securus https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/8/18174024/att-sprint-t-mobi... So yes. Google isn't good, but I can clearly tell what they are doing and what they are not doing. I trust google not to sell my data because they can get more value out of my data using it themselves and I actually don't have a problem with (reasonable) targeted ads.

cantrevealname 7y ago
> description of the fundamental technology that a spam filter uses Privacy-centric email providers don't retain any data from your emails after scanning for spam. Gmail does, and in unexpected places that I keep discovering and hearing about, and as far as I know, there is no Gmail switch to say, "Do the spam filtering but don't keep any data". > google is only showing this to me, this information will not be shared They can easily change their own policy on that, and they regularly do change their policy. Also, as you already mentioned, they'll share it after a subpoena. I don't want them to have or keep that data at all.

barberousse 7y ago

Dunno about that spam claim, stuff gets through Fastmail's filters

lern_too_spel 7y ago

Because collecting data and sharing data are the only actions that affect privacy. Gmail neither collects nor shares any more data than any other email provider. The only difference is that it provides additional value on top of that data through better spam filtering and assistant functionality, neither of which affect the privacy implications of the service.

dageshi 7y ago

People value utility and cost over privacy. They say they don't, but their continued usage of Gmail says they do. That and the fact is most people I think are not vehemently against ads unless they're really annoying.