4 ms·

Plus they can ... read your emails? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28631732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28631732

hericium 4y ago
I'd say it's more about attachments: invoices, receipts, anything with purchases and/or financial info.
- cj 4y ago
  In most cases the same information you can glean from someone’s email inbox, you can likely glean the same accuracy by looking at their google search history. I would guess Google doesn’t read emails because the data is more difficult to parse (there’s a lot of it) and, when compared to intent based interests that can be gleaned from your google searches, the value of the content in your inbox is lower than most people think.
skybrian 4y ago
They could but claim they don't, and I don't think anyone has proven otherwise. Hard to make money from something you're not actually doing.
- api 4y ago
  I assume they are. Of course I assume if it’s not end to end encrypted it’s not private and is being read or scanned by someone.
  - amf12 4y ago
    Well yes they do. Even spam filtering needs them to read the emails. But they claim they don't use emails for advertising.
  - kmlx 4y ago
    i’ve replied above. they claim they do not read your emails. regarding encryption i’ve only found this: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6330403?hl=en#zippy=%2Csmime-enhanced-encryption https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6330403?hl=en#zippy=%... > Email encryption in transit S/MIME is used to support enhanced encryption in transit, and automatically encrypts your outgoing emails if it can. > Important: These steps only work if you have S/MIME enabled on your account
    - api 4y ago
      End-to-end encryption with keys only you control is really the only type that matters from a privacy point of view. Encryption at rest or in transit behind the scenes helps protect against some actors but does not give you privacy. The zero-setup encryption offered by cloud providers is also smoke and mirrors. It's a key they control, so while it may improve security against someone internal snooping on a raw SAN device it doesn't do much for your privacy.
kmlx 4y ago
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10434152?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10434152?hl=en > We do not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads If you have a work or school account, you will never be shown ads in Gmail. > When you use your personal Google account and open the promotions or social tabs in Gmail, you'll see ads that were selected to be the most useful and relevant for you. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated. These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google, however we do not process email content to serve ads.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  What about the meta data?
- myfavoritedog 4y ago
  [dead]
- clnq 4y ago
  I know a company that once worked on an unannounced product, X, a few years ago. At the time, you could Google "who made X," and Google would correctly show you that company. It was a start-up size business using GSuite, so far too unlikely to be a lucky guess by Google. This caused no damage as the public needed to know what X was to Google it, and it was unannounced. But it was suspicious. Either Google was scanning GSuite Gmail or Drive accounts, or perhaps someone stored a document on or sent an email to a personal Google account with some keywords. How these things happen is always very opaque with companies like Google.
  - zeven7 4y ago
    Our maybe an internal page was accidentally externally accessible, someone internal visited it in Chrome, and the URL got added to the list of things to scrape.
  - erosenbe0 4y ago
    I've see this without Gsuite vector. Could be employees logged in to personal device and leaking through those interactions. Or email to external investors, consultants, or contractors? Send something out to your external translation or localization team, ad agency, or copy editor? Difficult not to have some leakage.
kyrra 4y ago
Why not link to the top level story? I have the top reply on that story, that links to some support links explaining it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28632012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28632012 To add, I believe they have since turned that future down.

hericium 4y ago

I'd say it's more about attachments: invoices, receipts, anything with purchases and/or financial info.

cj 4y ago
In most cases the same information you can glean from someone’s email inbox, you can likely glean the same accuracy by looking at their google search history. I would guess Google doesn’t read emails because the data is more difficult to parse (there’s a lot of it) and, when compared to intent based interests that can be gleaned from your google searches, the value of the content in your inbox is lower than most people think.

skybrian 4y ago

They could but claim they don't, and I don't think anyone has proven otherwise. Hard to make money from something you're not actually doing.

api 4y ago
I assume they are. Of course I assume if it’s not end to end encrypted it’s not private and is being read or scanned by someone.
- amf12 4y ago
  Well yes they do. Even spam filtering needs them to read the emails. But they claim they don't use emails for advertising.
- kmlx 4y ago
  i’ve replied above. they claim they do not read your emails. regarding encryption i’ve only found this: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6330403?hl=en#zippy=%2Csmime-enhanced-encryption https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6330403?hl=en#zippy=%... > Email encryption in transit S/MIME is used to support enhanced encryption in transit, and automatically encrypts your outgoing emails if it can. > Important: These steps only work if you have S/MIME enabled on your account
  - api 4y ago
    End-to-end encryption with keys only you control is really the only type that matters from a privacy point of view. Encryption at rest or in transit behind the scenes helps protect against some actors but does not give you privacy. The zero-setup encryption offered by cloud providers is also smoke and mirrors. It's a key they control, so while it may improve security against someone internal snooping on a raw SAN device it doesn't do much for your privacy.

kmlx 4y ago

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10434152?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10434152?hl=en > We do not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads If you have a work or school account, you will never be shown ads in Gmail. > When you use your personal Google account and open the promotions or social tabs in Gmail, you'll see ads that were selected to be the most useful and relevant for you. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated. These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google, however we do not process email content to serve ads.

Scoundreller 4y ago
What about the meta data?
myfavoritedog 4y ago
[dead]
clnq 4y ago
I know a company that once worked on an unannounced product, X, a few years ago. At the time, you could Google "who made X," and Google would correctly show you that company. It was a start-up size business using GSuite, so far too unlikely to be a lucky guess by Google. This caused no damage as the public needed to know what X was to Google it, and it was unannounced. But it was suspicious. Either Google was scanning GSuite Gmail or Drive accounts, or perhaps someone stored a document on or sent an email to a personal Google account with some keywords. How these things happen is always very opaque with companies like Google.
- zeven7 4y ago
  Our maybe an internal page was accidentally externally accessible, someone internal visited it in Chrome, and the URL got added to the list of things to scrape.
- erosenbe0 4y ago
  I've see this without Gsuite vector. Could be employees logged in to personal device and leaking through those interactions. Or email to external investors, consultants, or contractors? Send something out to your external translation or localization team, ad agency, or copy editor? Difficult not to have some leakage.

kyrra 4y ago

Why not link to the top level story? I have the top reply on that story, that links to some support links explaining it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28632012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28632012 To add, I believe they have since turned that future down.