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That sounds terrible, although I agree not evil. Although what is evil is they won't let me opt out of them using my email content for their ads in gmail. The

That sounds terrible, although I agree not evil. Although what is evil is they won't let me opt out of them using my email content for their ads in gmail. They say they let you opt out, but they just keep using it. All of these recent changes has me considering moving away from GMail for mail and to Hotmail. I've already made the search change to Bing (over a year ago). GMail has been miles ahead for years, but over the past year or so Hotmail has almost comletely closed the gap.

jrockway 15y ago
Just out of curiosity, does it also upset you that your ISP reads your email in order to filter out spam and verify the DKIM signature? Ultimately, email that is not encrypted is going to be read and tamperd with in transit. It's an intrinsic quality of SMTP-based electronic email. Might as well get a nice UI and a few gigs of storage out of it :)
- cynwoody 15y ago
  Neither email nor spam filtering nor any other kind of filtering should be the job of an ISP. An ISP should be a big, dumb bit pipe, nothing more, nothing less.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    That's one way of looking at it, but email without spam filtering is largely useless. There's just too much of it. Similarly, ISPs filter all sorts of other stuff: forged packets, bogus routes, and so on. The Internet simply would not work without ISP-level filtering. Dumb pipes get clogged too easily.
    - cynwoody 15y ago
      That's why I use GMail. Its spam filtering is top-notch. I use Verizon FiOS for internet. It works pretty well. But no way do I want Verizon doing my email. I view it as a conflict of interest. It pisses me off that they also provide TV and continually try to upsell me to it. I'd much rather the whole bandwidth of the fiber be devoted to internet and none to TV. I don't have a problem with the low-level filtering you mention. That just makes the pipe work better. But I do have a problem with ISPs wanting to morph into more that.
  - nknight 15y ago
    If your ISP offers you email service and you take advantage of it, you aren't asking it to just be a big dumb pipe. ISPs do nothing of the sort when you get your email through third-party providers like gmail, which people obviously do not want to just be a big dumb pipe, since the entire purpose of using gmail is as a email service. Put another way: The person you're replying to was using the term "ISP" loosely, and you're using it very narrowly. There was a time when your ISP was almost always your email provider, and third-party services and self-hosting were extremely rare.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  My ISP isn't serving up ads based on it. My ISP isn't giving me a UI to opt-out, but then ignores the setting.

jrockway 15y ago

Just out of curiosity, does it also upset you that your ISP reads your email in order to filter out spam and verify the DKIM signature? Ultimately, email that is not encrypted is going to be read and tamperd with in transit. It's an intrinsic quality of SMTP-based electronic email. Might as well get a nice UI and a few gigs of storage out of it :)

cynwoody 15y ago
Neither email nor spam filtering nor any other kind of filtering should be the job of an ISP. An ISP should be a big, dumb bit pipe, nothing more, nothing less.
- jrockway 15y ago
  That's one way of looking at it, but email without spam filtering is largely useless. There's just too much of it. Similarly, ISPs filter all sorts of other stuff: forged packets, bogus routes, and so on. The Internet simply would not work without ISP-level filtering. Dumb pipes get clogged too easily.
  - cynwoody 15y ago
    That's why I use GMail. Its spam filtering is top-notch. I use Verizon FiOS for internet. It works pretty well. But no way do I want Verizon doing my email. I view it as a conflict of interest. It pisses me off that they also provide TV and continually try to upsell me to it. I'd much rather the whole bandwidth of the fiber be devoted to internet and none to TV. I don't have a problem with the low-level filtering you mention. That just makes the pipe work better. But I do have a problem with ISPs wanting to morph into more that.
- nknight 15y ago
  If your ISP offers you email service and you take advantage of it, you aren't asking it to just be a big dumb pipe. ISPs do nothing of the sort when you get your email through third-party providers like gmail, which people obviously do not want to just be a big dumb pipe, since the entire purpose of using gmail is as a email service. Put another way: The person you're replying to was using the term "ISP" loosely, and you're using it very narrowly. There was a time when your ISP was almost always your email provider, and third-party services and self-hosting were extremely rare.
kenjackson 15y ago
My ISP isn't serving up ads based on it. My ISP isn't giving me a UI to opt-out, but then ignores the setting.