5 ms·

I'm happy to pay to Google, but I would be happy if in return it would stop mining my emails. Still, I know that it's too much to ask for.

thesandlord 7y ago
Gmail stopped reading emails a while back: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en
- zajd 7y ago
  "to show you ads", what exactly that means is beyond me. They obviously scan your emails, as there are a ton of features that require it, things like recognizing when a flight is upcoming, etc. If you trust them not to use that for advertising I have some valuable beachfront real estate to sell you. Remember Twitter/FB's 'oops, we were accidentally using the recovery number incorrectly', Google essentially just leaves that door open via the language used in this answer. Without a definition of "for advertising" it's just meaningless.
- rurp 7y ago
  "Google does not read your emails for the purpose of directly targeting ads" is a wildly different and much more accurate statement than "Gmail stopped reading your emails".
mattzito 7y ago
Google does not mine your emails. https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/ensuring-your-security-and-privacy-within-gmail/ https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/ensuring-... Disclosure: I work for google on G Suite, but not on Gmail.
- mfer 7y ago
  > We do not process email content to serve ads This says nothing about email metadata being used in relation to ads or for uses of content unrelated to ads (e.g., generation of search results). If I hadn't seen the leaked selfish ledger video [1] I would not look for these nuances in the language. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish...
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    There's a linguistic ambiguity in the part of the op here. What is "mining"? Is spam filtering mining? Is indexing for search (in Gmail) mining? Is sticking flights on your calendar (and nothing else) mining? Mining sounds nefarious. Are analysis of emails for the consumer still mining? If they are, and any scanning of emails is bad, why use Gmail? To me at least, it's value is the stuff it does for me.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      Gmail knows about more than flights. They know everything you've bought and received an email receipt for: https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/878/#tl/search/Category%3Apurchases https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/878/#tl/search/Category%3... There's nothing in their privacy policy that explicitly states they don't use that info for ad targeting that I can see.
      - joshuamorton 7y ago
        What part of "We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other G Suite services. Google does not collect or use data in G Suite services for advertising purposes." is ambiguous?[0] But that's Gsuite, what about consumer Gmail? "G Suite’s Gmail is already not used as input for ads personalization, and Google has decided to follow suit later this year in our free consumer Gmail service. Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change"[1] [0]: https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650, under "Does Google use my organization’s data in G Suite services or Cloud Platform for advertising purposes?" [1]: https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/#targetText=Consumer%20Gmail%20content%20will%20not,time%2C%20including%20disabling%20ads%20personalization https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-tractio....
        tyingq 7y ago
        Where is that? I get redirected to the general Google privacy page from within free Gmail. I could read that as for only paid Gsuite Gmail, not free Gmail. As an aside the "what part of..." leader in your reply comes across as rude. The resources you are citing aren't an easy find from within free Gmail. And they aren't in the privacy policy, so what I said remains true.
- xiphias2 7y ago
  If this is true how does Google know about my flight details for example? Is it client side Android code or does the information get to the server side in a database decrypted? Also if Google doesn't need my emails, can you tell me why Google is behind other companies in end-to-end encryption of emails? I'm sure many people would like to have it as a feature (even if it makes searching these emails server side impossible)
  - kps 7y ago
    https://schema.org/ https://schema.org/ — email metadata for things like events and purchases.
    - daveslash 7y ago
      Wait... What!? Okay, I'm admittedly ignorant of the technical details of email, but I thought "an email" was just some text (with encoding specified), some internet headers, and maybe a binary blob representing an attachment. Basically, what you see if you "view original" in Gmail. Is there additional meta data that makes up an email? Like, outside of the content "container" part of the email (similar to how image meta data is saved in the EXIF part of a JPEG file, but isn't part of the image itself)? Sorry if I phrased that dumbly. I assume this, specifically, is what you're referring to https://schema.org/EmailMessage https://schema.org/EmailMessage
      - smileybarry 7y ago
        They referred to such schemas like "FlightReservation"[1] for flights, "EventReservation"[2] commonly used for movie tickets, or "LodgingReservation" used for hotel bookings. The specific supporting website encodes your reservation in these formats inside the confirmation email, and Gmail picks up on that. (IIRC it used to scrape emails for that data, but most of it if not all is done via schemas nowadays) [1] https://schema.org/FlightReservation https://schema.org/FlightReservation [2] https://schema.org/EventReservation https://schema.org/EventReservation [3] https://schema.org/LodgingReservation https://schema.org/LodgingReservation
- bproctor 7y ago
  Of course they do. This post says nothing to the contrary.
- blihp 7y ago
  I believe your statement is incorrect. While it may no longer scan emails for direct ad serving purposes, I believe emails are still scanned for other purposes. For example, I remember running across a purchase history page a while back that had saved purchase history data based on email confirmations in gmail. IIRC, it was from specific sellers like Amazon going further back than my gmail history, which I periodically purge. I never wanted/enabled this 'feature' and saw no way to disable or delete the purchase history. Maybe this stopped, maybe it didn't, but this game of whack-a-mole with Google has gotten tedious.
- isoprophlex 7y ago
  How do you arrive at the list [0] I can view in my account details, that shows all purchases ever made with my gmail account (a feature i cannot disable)? How else does your employer arrive at this aggregated/filtered dataset? Oneiromancy? [0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-tracks-your-purchase-history-but-motives-seem-unclear/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-tracks-your-p...
- x2f10 7y ago
  Can you quote the section? I am not able to find the relevant wordage.
- JoshMnem 7y ago
  "Google is tracking your purchases through Gmail" (May 2019) https://www.cnet.com/news/google-is-tracking-your-purchases-through-gmail/ https://www.cnet.com/news/google-is-tracking-your-purchases-...
- bachmeier 7y ago
  Even if we take that post to mean they don't ever look at the content of your email at all (I don't see that), can you tell us who independently verifies that claim? Or should we just trust Google because, hey, a large corporation would never lie to anyone or try to abuse the fine print of a user agreement.
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  They did until 2017, so they could always change their minds again.
GlitchMr 7y ago
Google promises exactly that for G Suite accounts, see https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 for more details. However, there is a trade-off that some services won't work with G Suite accounts, as they weren't changed to not track.
- gruez 7y ago
  If you read between the lines, it looks like that they still "create advertising profiles" if you're a gsuite user. They repeatedly state they don't "scan [...] for advertising purposes", but they only mention not creating advertising profiles under gsuite for education. My interpretation is that they might not be scanning your emails, but they're still building a dossier on you.

thesandlord 7y ago

Gmail stopped reading emails a while back: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

zajd 7y ago
"to show you ads", what exactly that means is beyond me. They obviously scan your emails, as there are a ton of features that require it, things like recognizing when a flight is upcoming, etc. If you trust them not to use that for advertising I have some valuable beachfront real estate to sell you. Remember Twitter/FB's 'oops, we were accidentally using the recovery number incorrectly', Google essentially just leaves that door open via the language used in this answer. Without a definition of "for advertising" it's just meaningless.
rurp 7y ago
"Google does not read your emails for the purpose of directly targeting ads" is a wildly different and much more accurate statement than "Gmail stopped reading your emails".

mattzito 7y ago

Google does not mine your emails. https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/ensuring-your-security-and-privacy-within-gmail/ https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/ensuring-... Disclosure: I work for google on G Suite, but not on Gmail.

mfer 7y ago
> We do not process email content to serve ads This says nothing about email metadata being used in relation to ads or for uses of content unrelated to ads (e.g., generation of search results). If I hadn't seen the leaked selfish ledger video [1] I would not look for these nuances in the language. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish...
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  There's a linguistic ambiguity in the part of the op here. What is "mining"? Is spam filtering mining? Is indexing for search (in Gmail) mining? Is sticking flights on your calendar (and nothing else) mining? Mining sounds nefarious. Are analysis of emails for the consumer still mining? If they are, and any scanning of emails is bad, why use Gmail? To me at least, it's value is the stuff it does for me.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Gmail knows about more than flights. They know everything you've bought and received an email receipt for: https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/878/#tl/search/Category%3Apurchases https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/mp/878/#tl/search/Category%3... There's nothing in their privacy policy that explicitly states they don't use that info for ad targeting that I can see.
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      What part of "We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other G Suite services. Google does not collect or use data in G Suite services for advertising purposes." is ambiguous?[0] But that's Gsuite, what about consumer Gmail? "G Suite’s Gmail is already not used as input for ads personalization, and Google has decided to follow suit later this year in our free consumer Gmail service. Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change"[1] [0]: https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650, under "Does Google use my organization’s data in G Suite services or Cloud Platform for advertising purposes?" [1]: https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/#targetText=Consumer%20Gmail%20content%20will%20not,time%2C%20including%20disabling%20ads%20personalization https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-tractio....
      - tyingq 7y ago
        Where is that? I get redirected to the general Google privacy page from within free Gmail. I could read that as for only paid Gsuite Gmail, not free Gmail. As an aside the "what part of..." leader in your reply comes across as rude. The resources you are citing aren't an easy find from within free Gmail. And they aren't in the privacy policy, so what I said remains true.
xiphias2 7y ago
If this is true how does Google know about my flight details for example? Is it client side Android code or does the information get to the server side in a database decrypted? Also if Google doesn't need my emails, can you tell me why Google is behind other companies in end-to-end encryption of emails? I'm sure many people would like to have it as a feature (even if it makes searching these emails server side impossible)
- kps 7y ago
  https://schema.org/ https://schema.org/ — email metadata for things like events and purchases.
  - daveslash 7y ago
    Wait... What!? Okay, I'm admittedly ignorant of the technical details of email, but I thought "an email" was just some text (with encoding specified), some internet headers, and maybe a binary blob representing an attachment. Basically, what you see if you "view original" in Gmail. Is there additional meta data that makes up an email? Like, outside of the content "container" part of the email (similar to how image meta data is saved in the EXIF part of a JPEG file, but isn't part of the image itself)? Sorry if I phrased that dumbly. I assume this, specifically, is what you're referring to https://schema.org/EmailMessage https://schema.org/EmailMessage
    - smileybarry 7y ago
      They referred to such schemas like "FlightReservation"[1] for flights, "EventReservation"[2] commonly used for movie tickets, or "LodgingReservation" used for hotel bookings. The specific supporting website encodes your reservation in these formats inside the confirmation email, and Gmail picks up on that. (IIRC it used to scrape emails for that data, but most of it if not all is done via schemas nowadays) [1] https://schema.org/FlightReservation https://schema.org/FlightReservation [2] https://schema.org/EventReservation https://schema.org/EventReservation [3] https://schema.org/LodgingReservation https://schema.org/LodgingReservation
bproctor 7y ago
Of course they do. This post says nothing to the contrary.
blihp 7y ago
I believe your statement is incorrect. While it may no longer scan emails for direct ad serving purposes, I believe emails are still scanned for other purposes. For example, I remember running across a purchase history page a while back that had saved purchase history data based on email confirmations in gmail. IIRC, it was from specific sellers like Amazon going further back than my gmail history, which I periodically purge. I never wanted/enabled this 'feature' and saw no way to disable or delete the purchase history. Maybe this stopped, maybe it didn't, but this game of whack-a-mole with Google has gotten tedious.
isoprophlex 7y ago
How do you arrive at the list [0] I can view in my account details, that shows all purchases ever made with my gmail account (a feature i cannot disable)? How else does your employer arrive at this aggregated/filtered dataset? Oneiromancy? [0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-tracks-your-purchase-history-but-motives-seem-unclear/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-tracks-your-p...
x2f10 7y ago
Can you quote the section? I am not able to find the relevant wordage.
JoshMnem 7y ago
"Google is tracking your purchases through Gmail" (May 2019) https://www.cnet.com/news/google-is-tracking-your-purchases-through-gmail/ https://www.cnet.com/news/google-is-tracking-your-purchases-...
bachmeier 7y ago
Even if we take that post to mean they don't ever look at the content of your email at all (I don't see that), can you tell us who independently verifies that claim? Or should we just trust Google because, hey, a large corporation would never lie to anyone or try to abuse the fine print of a user agreement.
peterwwillis 7y ago
They did until 2017, so they could always change their minds again.

GlitchMr 7y ago

Google promises exactly that for G Suite accounts, see https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650 for more details. However, there is a trade-off that some services won't work with G Suite accounts, as they weren't changed to not track.

gruez 7y ago
If you read between the lines, it looks like that they still "create advertising profiles" if you're a gsuite user. They repeatedly state they don't "scan [...] for advertising purposes", but they only mention not creating advertising profiles under gsuite for education. My interpretation is that they might not be scanning your emails, but they're still building a dossier on you.