google gmail users…beware

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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.

10 thoughts on “google gmail users…beware”

  1. Reblogged this on ninasoden and commented:
    I don’t normally reblog posts, but this one I felt was important. As a writer I use gmail to send my manuscript back and forth to my editors, and the way I read this new google policy it seems that google is claiming that anything they find in my email (sent, received, stored, etc.) they have free rights to. I DON’T LIKE THAT ONE BIT!!! Does that mean I need to delete all my book content from my gmail account? Should I worry that my manuscripts can be stolen and published under the name of someone else… someone that works at google that just happens to see them?

    This post was eye opening, and has got me thinking that maybe, just maybe, leaving google… and gmail… is the right option.

    Before I do anything drastic… what are your thoughts? Am I going too far or do you agree?

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    • As hackers penetrate supposed secure sites with more frequency these days, it’s a wonder we still entrust our lives to the internet with seeming abandon. The price of convenience and access has just gone up immeasurably. I guess it’s up to us individually to decide our top price. Sad truth is that there’ll always be those who prefer to live off the hard work of others, instead of putting their own brains and brawn to good, honest work. Even sadder…the rich get richer and can afford security systems up the wahzoo…while the shrinking middle class and the growing impoverished have nowhere to turn for help or relief. And the Google-meisters? Well, they’re just raking in the cold, hard cash…regardless of where everyone else stands. So, unless you start an internet revolution of some kind, I’d say…go with your gut instinct. You can’t go wrong if you do.

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