google gmail users…beware

While perusing another blogger’s site, I came across this information which might be of importance to Google Gmail users.

On Tuesday Google updated its privacy policies to make it absolutely clear that it is scanning your email.

 

It added these sentences:

Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.

It also tweaked a few sentences that warn that all the stuff you upload to Google is considered fair game. (Google included the editing marks, to show you exactly which words it changed):

When you upload,or otherwise submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

This information comes at an interesting time. Google is being sued over email scanning, in a suit from 2013, where the plaintiffs allege that Google violated wiretapping laws by scanning the content of emails, Ars Technica’s Casey Johnston reports.

However, last month, the judge in the case did not allow the suit to go forward as a class-action suit. That put a damper on the case because individual email users would each need to pursue lawsuits, Johnston reports

The change in the privacy policy also comes on the heels of Microsoft’s decision to put its “Scroogled” ad campaign on the back burner. Scroogled was Microsoft’s attempt to bash Google over issues like email scanning. But thanks to a recent re-org, the guy running the Scroogled campaign no longer controls the ad budget, ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reports.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-warns-we-are-scanning-your-email-2014-4#ixzz2zpRvXeoK

…”big brother” is watching…no surprise, really…

………hugmamma.

Weekly photo challenge – on top

couldn’t resist sharing this entry for the WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE…ON TOP…

Third Person Travel

“On top” another fun theme on the the WordPress weekly photo challenge.
Captured at the Guggenheim Bilbao on a rainy day, “a spider does not an umbrella make.”

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happy easter…happy spring…

Because the weather here in the Seattle area is so iffy…rain pouring down on us without any warning…hubby and I decided to forgo Easter Day celebrations in lieu of gardening. Praise God…the sun decided to spend the day.

Celebrating the holiday early, we treated our nephew and his lovely wife to lunch yesterday. Immersed in conversation and enjoying one another’s company, we barely noticed the raindrops pelting ferociously against the windows of the restaurant, as if pleading to to be let inside.

It’s not often my husband and I get to spend time with young folks. Our daughter’s the exception, of course. We’re lucky that she and our nieces and nephews get that we’re fun, sometimes weird…in a good way.

Hubby and I laugh a lot. We cajole one another. We make each other smile. We exchange silly remarks. We even call each other goofy names.

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…young uns ourselves back in the day…as kooky then…as we are now…

I’m pretty sure my husband’s business colleagues would be thoroughly surprised were they to see him bumming around in his “allo, allos,” as we Hawaiians like to say. Translation? “Raggedy clothes.” Not that they’re raggedy, they’re just not his usual corporate duds.

In fact, even his personality undergoes a transformation. He’s not so careful about minding his p’s and q’s around the house. He’s not the reticent, quiet guy he projects at work. It’s more like he goes from being Clark Kent and Superman to being George Burns, the comedienne and straight man to his wife and comic sidekick, Gracie Allen.

I’ve always been a self-proclaimed Lucy…as in “I Love Lucy.”IMG_1493 I probably started squirreling away all those crazy antics of hers, ever since I first laid eyes on that zany redhead back in the 50’s. Add to that a touch of Gracie Allen, and you get an idea of how kooky our household often is. My daughter threatens to follow me around with a camera so she can post a youtube video showing the world the real hugmamma. (Not going to happen. Trust me.)

So it’s nice to be loved by the likes of my rather normal daughter, and young relatives, who go out of their way to humor their elders whenever we’re together. 

Although an unconventional celebration at a small Japanese restaurant the day before, our Easter holiday was indeed happy and blest. 

Aloha and mahalo to Kanoa and Erica for making it so.

And I’m hoping yours was equally joyful as well!

………hugmamma.

 

 

friday fictioneers: pretty, pretty princess…

Copyright - Douglas M. MacIlroy

He was a corporate guy in a suit and tie,

but in a pink hat with matching pearls, he was just one of us girls.

By day he managed employees, sat in on meetings, and problem solved.

At night he happily chucked it all to play “Pretty, Pretty Princess.”

A couple of decades later, he’s still commuting for a paycheck. 

He’s traded floor fun for quiet, relaxed evenings in a chair, Nook in hand, head nodding. 

Memories, always fresh, still linger…of bygone days with his little girl.

All grown up, but still his pretty, pretty princess.

His pumpkin pie. Her pops.

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friday fictioneers: living la vida loca…

copyright - DLovering

Once upon a time not so long ago, two strangers met online.

A date soon followed.

As if to bless the occasion the night skies rained down streams of fireworks in celebration of Mardi Gras.

Moira sizzled. Wavy hair the color of New Orleans sunsets framed her porcelain perfect face, while cat-like eyes the color of emeralds bore holes through an onlooker’s soul.

Hovering protectively nearby, a hand cupping her elbow was Jeff, looking every inch Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent.

Fairy tales do happen “when you wish upon a star.”

It did for this lady-of-the-night and her financier, knight-in-shining-armor.

Ooh-la-la. IMG_2610