quote:

Originally posted by est I don't know much about computers, but don't most email providers decide that an email is spam depending on how many people it is sent to? And attachments are disallowed depending on the size of them? But what gmail is doing is more than that - the actual content of our emails is now under scrutiny.

I administer several e-mail servers myself and I know for a fact that most e-mail service providers with spam/virus detection now a days not only check for the things you mentioned but also analyze the content of the actual e-mail. They will check everything from the actual body to the subject, or if the e-mail was written using HTML, if there are graphics, if there was a salutation, etc etc. ( Click here for more info ). Now, Gmail just happens to analyze the body as well but apart from spam detection purposes, they also use it for advertizement. The ads don't bother me that much, hell sometimes I find them useful.

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But like I said, it's a pet hate of mine. I'm just one of these people that likes to have my own space.

That's understandable I guess. I have a problem with it as well being that I administer hundreds of people e-mails and that at any time I could read them If i really wanted to (and had the time). So knowing my e-mail is out there at the hands of someone else is kinda annoying but at the same time I had to learn to live with it because unfortunatley thats how it works right now. Most people I send e-mails to don't care for setting up proper encryption.

The point is that gmail or not, your e-mail content is being scrutinized by something. There are more important things you should worry about online than some piece of software looking at the body of your email for advertizement. I don't know, I find the advantages of using a well done solid e-mail service like gmail overtake its disadvantages.

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Originally posted by est OK, so it's not like there's a bunch of people sitting physically reading every email sent on gmail - that would just be silly. The email had nothing to do with virus scanning or spam protection, but everything to do with posting adverts depending on what the email is about. I don't know much about computers, but don't most email providers decide that an email is spam depending on how many people it is sent to? And attachments are disallowed depending on the size of them? But what gmail is doing is more than that - the actual content of our emails is now under scrutiny. The fact that it's a computer program as opposed to a human being makes not one whit of difference to me.

Most spam filters will perform a textual parse of incoming messages. Virus scanners will also scan the email, but won't "read" it as text.

Neither of these compares in any way to what gmail does. Gmail parses your email to attempt to determine what it is about, and then displays advertisements relevant to the topic. But it also archives the information on what ad was displayed to what user at what IP address on Google's own servers indefinitely for purposes that Google has outright refused to identify.

This personally identifiable data is pooled with data Google collects about you from other services it provides, including their search engine and used for unknown purposes. According to gmail's privacy policy, by using gmail you agree that google can share any of this data, personally identifiable or not, including the emails stored in your inbox themselves, with any official of any government in any country that Google operates, even if the request is informal and undocumented, all at Google's own personal discretion.

This also applies to emails you've trashed and deleted, which nevertheless remain on Google's servers indefinitely for arcane purposes and cannot be removed by you by any means.

I suppose Google just expects you to trust them. As this thread shows, there are plenty of suckers all over the world willing to do just that. But before you decide to trust google, you should consider:

1. Google is one of the worlds largest distributors of spyware (the "google toolbar").
2. Google stores an archive of all your past search terms, all the results of their email-parsing algorithms, every website you visit (if you're infected with the toolbar), and all your deleted emails all of which is personally identifiable. And they refuse to tell anyone to what end this data is stored.
3. Google offers no privacy policy at all to non-gmail users sending emails to gmail users. So if [email protected] sends a gmail user an email, he has no protection against google physically reading it and selling its content tied to his email address and/or IP address to the highest bidder (or all bidders).
4. Google reserves the right to share any information on you that it stores (which is to say anything it can get its hands on) with agents of foreign governments at its own discretion with no legal oversight.

Anyone who cares about their privacy should stay as far away from Google's services as possible, including not sending email to gmail addresses. If you must use google's search engine, at least disable cookies for their domain.

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Originally posted by Arbiter

lol, I would check who the author of the website (google-watch.org) where you got that info from is before posting what is mostly misinformation with a secondary purpose .

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Which parts from Arbiter's post are "misinformation with a secondary purpose"?

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Originally posted by loconet lol, I would check who the author of the website (google-watch.org) where you got that info from is before posting what is mostly misinformation with a secondary purpose .

I'm sure you would. Personally, I would base my arguments about Google's reliability on verifiable facts, such as the contents of Google's various privacy policies, instead of fallacious ad hominem attacks against the author of one of many anti-google websites. But that's because i'm not an imbecile and a sucker, which it seems apparent that you are.

If you have any evidence or a logically sound arugment to present that shows that what I've written is in fact misinformation, I'd be more than happy to hear it. But baseless insinuations about the author of a website that makes similar claims is not a valid argument.

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Originally posted by est so, all this just so as you can show a nickname to your non-businness friends? you could jsut do what i do and show your real name to everyone...(says she who has 5 email accounts to check every day )

That's true, and it would make things easier, but like I said, I don't want to show my real name to everyone for various reasons.

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Originally posted by Streakfury That's true, and it would make things easier, but like I said, I don't want to show my real name to everyone for various reasons.

gotcha...but does that mean you happily chat away to people and share files with them under an alias?

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Originally posted by Arbiter But that's because I’m not an imbecile and a sucker, which it seems apparent that you are.

lol, you just lost all your credibility right there buddy . Can't people have a mature discussion without resorting to insults now days? You should really try it kid. When you grow up, people take you more seriously that way.

but whatever, I'll bite. I may learn something.

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1. Google is one of the worlds largest distributors of spyware (the "google toolbar").

Can you show me evidence that Google's Toolbar is in fact spyware? (I don't use it, I don’t like the thing anyway). That is a very interesting allegation, I've seen it before in the basis of it just being a toolbar that sends data to google (duh , it has to in order to do its job) but I don't know, I may be wrong (happens often!). Please enlighten me.

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2. Google stores an archive of all your past search terms,

So you either work or used to work for them because how exactly do you know that they archive the past result search terms that may be used maliciously? I'm reading their privacy policy (http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy.html) and I don't see any mention of these "unknown" usages. All I see is that some of them are used for statistical purposes (Google Zeitgeist) in the form of aggregated data.

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all the results of their email-parsing algorithms, every website you visit (if you're infected with the toolbar),

Infected? That smells like a choice of word crafted to cause fear. lol., dude, you choose to install the thing yourself and can uninstall it at will. Far from being "infected".

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and all your deleted emails all of which is personally identifiable.

Please see: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/more.html#data

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And they refuse to tell anyone to what end this data is stored.

See above.

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3. Google offers no privacy policy at all to non-gmail users sending emails to gmail users. So if [email protected] sends a gmail user an email, he has no protection against google physically reading it and selling its content tied to his email address and/or IP address to the highest bidder (or all bidders).

That is true but then again, isn't that true for any other e-mail service anyway? Regardless if the e-mail service, there is going to be someone in between with the ability of reading the e-mail and selling that data.
So if you are worry about that, you might as well be offline, sell your car, quit your job or school, and lock yourself inside your house ..and don’t forget to shut your windows.

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4. Google reserves the right to share any information on you that it stores (which is to say anything it can get its hands on) with agents of foreign governments at its own discretion with no legal oversight.

Simply not true. Please read privacy policy.


Now, I don't work for them so I can't be for sure that they are telling the truth (Corporations saying the truth - oh the humanity! - but I haven't seen a reason to doubt them yet). Now, it seems like you have some insider information that us plain citizens don't have – so please feel free to share if you can. And don't just copy/paste sensationalist allegations for the sake of proving your point. Like you said, show some logical proof of these things. I'm only basing this from what I can tell in investigating the code with the limited view that I have and from their documents. That being said, I obviously may be just talking smack here and they really are out to get us!

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Sucks. I can't make it work. That's probably because I have not got a G-Mail.

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Originally posted by loconet lol, you just lost all your credibility right there buddy . Can't people have a mature discussion without resorting to insults now days? You should really try it kid. When you grow up, people take you more seriously that way.

Looks like a struck a nerve. Personally I don't give two shits whether you claim to take me seriously or not, but the fact that you've taken the time to attempt to refute my assertions indicates to me that whether you want to admit it or not, you do.

In any case, if you came to the chill out room for a mature discussion, you came to the wrong place. If you can't seperate a little trash-talking from the meat of a post, then perhaps you shouldn't have wandered out of your playpen into the mysterious and sometimes-hostile world of internet message boards. In other words: buck up, junior, we aren't here to coddle you.

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Can you show me evidence that Google's Toolbar is in fact spyware? (I don't use it, I don’t like the thing anyway). That is a very interesting allegation, I've seen it before in the basis of it just being a toolbar that sends data to google (duh , it has to in order to do its job) but I don't know, I may be wrong (happens often!). Please enlighten me.

Riddle:

What hides itself in software bundles to get onto users computers who don't specifically seek to install it, automatically downloads and installs software updates without prompting or notifying the user, sends user-specific information about the user's browsing habits back to a central database, and defaulty inserts auto-link ads into websites as the user browses the internet?

Answer: Spyware. Oh, and Google Toolbar.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,904096,00.asp
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/googleupdater/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum80/1010.htm

Now being the expert on personal credibility that you seem to see yourself as, I'm sure you can see how Google's dubious business practices with regards to their toolbar software already call into question their trustworthiness when it comes to maintaining their user's privacy with their other services.

That said, if I have some more time on my hands later perhaps I'll take the time to go into more detail on some of the other issues I've raised. I do appreciate that you actually bothered to come up with a few arguments this time around, but I have to wonder, if you were so genuinely interested in a "mature" discussion, why you didn't simply do that in the first place.

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Originally posted by Arbiter Looks like a struck a nerve.

lol, no nerve, I just find it silly that people resort to insults when they get frustrated due to their inability to backup claims they see on some website.

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Personally I don't give two shits whether you claim to take me seriously or not, but the fact that you've taken the time to attempt to refute my assertions indicates to me that whether you want to admit it or not, you do. In any case, if you came to the chill out room for a mature discussion, you came to the wrong place. If you can't seperate a little trash-talking from the meat of a post, then perhaps you shouldn't have wandered out of your playpen into the mysterious and sometimes-hostile world of internet message boards. In other words: buck up, junior, we aren't here to coddle you.

lol, right..well I guess that was expected.

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What hides itself in software bundles to get onto users computers who don't specifically seek to install it

wrong. not Google Bar. You have to _choose_ to install it and you can also _choose_ to uninstall it!

Now, maybe it is actually being distributed in a sneaky fashion with other programs? Maybe I just haven't seen that yet? Please show us.

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automatically downloads and installs software updates without prompting or notifying the user,

That I'll agree with. I personally don't like software that updates itself without notifying me. Who are they to decide when to install files on my computer without letting me know first. So by that logic the newest version of windows is also spyware hmm....

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sends user-specific information about the user's browsing habits back to a central database

Wow, imagine that, google needing to know which page you're viewing so it can 1) show you a cache of that page, 2) show links to the current page, or 3) show pages related to the one you're viewing.

How on earth could they do this without knowing what page you're viewing?

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and defaulty inserts auto-link ads into websites as the user browses the internet?

Unlike spyware, with google toolbar you have control over what features you want enabled or not. You can disable this autolink thing if it bothers you so much.

I still don't see how the Google Toolbar is spyware. People throw the word around too much now a days.

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i'd have to agree with loconet on this one. the googlebar is choosen by the user to install. if the people installing it don't want the features it says it offers they can either not install it/uninstall it/or disable those features.

spyware usually comes bundled with such things like kazaa & mgsplus for example. where as the googlebar does not come bundled with anything nor does it automatically download when u visit say.. google.com

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So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?