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>Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popular
by nobody9999 6mo ago
>Google knows users care about their privacy, and it made the promise in its terms precisely for that reason. People pay attention to this stuff, as the popularity of this story shows.
Do Google users care about their privacy? I'd expect not, given that Google is (and hasn't been shy about telling us about it) reading all their emails in order to provide more targeted advertisements.
And, as I mentioned, Google hasn't been shy about saying that's exactly what they do (prioritizing their ad revenue over their users' privacy), so I have to assume that Google users don't care about their privacy.
If they did care about their privacy, they'd self-host their email on hardware they physically control.
That's orthogonal to Google giving up data to the government, with or without notifying the user(s) in question, except that the above makes clear what we already know: Google doesn't respect the privacy of their users.
- crazygringo 6mo ago> given that Google is (and hasn't been shy about telling us about it) reading all their emails in order to provide more targeted advertisements. That hasn't been the case since 2017. Nearly a decade ago. They stopped precisely because Google users do care about privacy -- and tracking is one thing, but scanning the content of your e-mails is another.
- nobody9999 6mo agoYeah, sure. Whatever you say. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/05/07/googles-gmail-upgrade-you-must-decide-if-this-goes-too-far/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/05/07/googles-g... https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/11/gmail-is-reading-your-emails-and-attachments-to-train-its-ai-unless-you-turn-it-off https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/11/gmail-is-read... https://android.gadgethacks.com/how-to/gmails-ai-secretly-reads-your-emails-heres-how-to-stop-it/ https://android.gadgethacks.com/how-to/gmails-ai-secretly-re... https://www.howtogeek.com/gmail-might-be-harvesting-your-emails-to-train-aiheres-how-to-opt-out/ https://www.howtogeek.com/gmail-might-be-harvesting-your-ema... https://cyberguy.com/privacy/stop-google-ai-scanning-gmail/ https://cyberguy.com/privacy/stop-google-ai-scanning-gmail/
- crazygringo 6mo agoPlease don't be rude. And what you're linking to is NOT what you described, "in order to provide more targeted advertisements". Your links are describing Gemini integration. If you ask Gemini a question about your e-mails, obviously it needs to look at them. If Google is suggesting a smart reply, obviously it needs to process your e-mail to do so. But these are features designed to benefit the user. You were talking about target advertising. That's not what your links have anything to do with.
- nobody9999 6mo ago>Please don't be rude. [0]: "Google publicly announced in 2017 it would stop using Gmail content for ad targeting but continued to scan emails for spam, malware, and other non-ad functionality, which leaves room for ambiguity about downstream uses of metadata or other signals" Who cares why Google is reading your emails? Not me. Oh, it's just for non-ad functionality? In that case, go right ahead! Ugh! [0] https://factually.co/fact-checks/technology/email-scanning-for-targeted-advertising-c84417 https://factually.co/fact-checks/technology/email-scanning-f...
- crazygringo 6mo agoYou're upset Gmail blocks spam and malware?
- nobody9999 6mo ago>Please don't be rude.