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Google does not, nor have they ever, as far as I'm aware, sell personal user information to third parties. Google sells ads targeted at keywords and other inter

Google does not, nor have they ever, as far as I'm aware, sell personal user information to third parties. Google sells ads targeted at keywords and other interests, and while in an indirect way, this is profiting from user behavior, it is not the same as claiming they give out your personal info. Using third party hosted mail is a trade off, especially webmail. Unless you are using end-to-end encryption, intermediary servers will need plaintext access, not only to route the email, but to present it, to permit search, filtering, and other operations users value in the webmail client. Google is taking steps to ensure all data is encrypted-at-rest and encrypted-in-flight. That's not a perfect defense, but it is an improvement. What is to be gained by bashing them for taking positive steps that everyone in the industry, we hope, are also taking?

blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
So you don't think that Google sells and buys user data from data brokers to correlate with their usage data?
ntakasaki 13y ago
>Google is taking steps to ensure all data is encrypted-at-rest Are there any references or details regarding this?
belorn 13y ago
For money, one could have Google provide ads to users who vote for specific party. After a few days, you look at the logs and create a database of people and their voting habits. Thus you will now have a database of personal information, created by the action of giving money to Google. When you pay money for a product, its called bought. So I will call it bought personal user information, regardless if it has been laundered by advertisement clicks.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  How is Google going to know what party you voted for, when votes are by secret ballot? Voter registration databases, which are public information available for a small fee from state governments, are far more likely to yield a profile of your voting behavior than your gmail contents. Not only that, but anyone can opt-out of interest based ads for Gmail. Just go to Ad Settings (https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en) You have the choice of not seeing targeted and relevant ads, or of not using gmail at all. Try Fastmail for instance. I don't see the need to bash Google for doing the right thing on security.

blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago

So you don't think that Google sells and buys user data from data brokers to correlate with their usage data?

ntakasaki 13y ago

>Google is taking steps to ensure all data is encrypted-at-rest Are there any references or details regarding this?

belorn 13y ago

For money, one could have Google provide ads to users who vote for specific party. After a few days, you look at the logs and create a database of people and their voting habits. Thus you will now have a database of personal information, created by the action of giving money to Google. When you pay money for a product, its called bought. So I will call it bought personal user information, regardless if it has been laundered by advertisement clicks.

cromwellian 13y ago
How is Google going to know what party you voted for, when votes are by secret ballot? Voter registration databases, which are public information available for a small fee from state governments, are far more likely to yield a profile of your voting behavior than your gmail contents. Not only that, but anyone can opt-out of interest based ads for Gmail. Just go to Ad Settings (https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en) You have the choice of not seeing targeted and relevant ads, or of not using gmail at all. Try Fastmail for instance. I don't see the need to bash Google for doing the right thing on security.