Is Gmail the new Big Brother?

[GBuck]

I use gmail on a daily basis for personal and business communication, and I have recently been a little creeped out by it. I have sent an email and gotten stopped with a prompt stating, "You have used the word attachment in your email, but have not attached anything, do you wish to continue?" I have also started noticing that with their new "priority" system, they are giving reasons for the priorities listed. One of the reasons that they have given me a lot lately is, "this email has been listed as a priority mainly because of words contained in the message." Does this mean that they are screening every email I get? Who's to say this isn't going to turn into another avenue for screening and cataloging "threats"? I'm not doing anything I shouldn't be, but my God, this seems like a huge invasion of privacy.

 

[DownByTheTracks]

Google will rule the world one day.

 

[Westside]

They store every email you have ever sent or received regardless of if you have deleted it or not.

Google is the largest data collector in the world.

 

[eldirector]

I doubt a person is reading everything, and I doubt it is all cataloged. Though, every message you have ever sent and received will be in their archives forever.

The technology is pretty creepy, but quite amazing. Their pattern matching tools are beyond impressive, especially considering the volume they deal with. Let's hope they stick to their "do no evil" motto!

 

[GBuck]

They store every email you have ever sent or received regardless of if you have deleted it or not.

Google is the largest data collector in the world.

I understand storing it, and it doesn't really matter. If you're good enough with computers, something is NEVER actually deleted.

It's completely different to "read" the emails.

 

[BE Mike]

One should not expect privacy on the internet. There is no such thing. That being said, the difference between a true "Big Brother" government entity and a private company, is that you can walk away from a private company and give business to it's competitor.

 

[IndySSD]

If you're good enough with computers, something is NEVER actually deleted.

Yep, the only way to truly erase data is the same way you get rid of witches.... burn baby burn....

 

[eldirector]

It is basically the same routine they use to display appropriate ads.
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=6603

I don't know if they "read" it so much as do a quick pattern match.

 

[spasmo]

Mozilla Thunderbird prompts me for that as well when I use any variant of the word attach. It also prompts me if I have no subject.

I think it's a great reminder. I sometimes forget to actually attach the file.

 

[Noland]

Gmail has always scanned messages in order to provide more relevant advertisements. The service is excellent and I don't care if they have all of my email data. I would never put anything into an email that I was worried about being a secret.

There is another company that knows even more about your interweb habits than Google does - your ISP.