Google penalising privacy choices?

CelticRambler

Last week, I set up a new Gmail address on behalf of an association I'm doing some work for. As is my habit, I went through the personalisation options and opted out of letting Google trawl through this account's browsing history, YouTube history, message content, location, recommendations, etc, etc, etc.

And from the date of set-up until this afternoon, had a 100% failure rate for outgoing messages sent directly from the Gmail interface, all tagged with the info that their (google's) IP address was blacklisted by the recipient's ISP. Every one.

Messages routed through my own SMTP arrived at the destination without any problem.

This afternoon, I modified the privacy settings to allow Google spy on this account and voilà - suddenly all outgoing messages are being received as they ought to be.

Pure flukey coincidence, or does Google penalise people who actually want to preserve a degree of privacy?

Laviski

CelticRambler wrote: »

Last week, I set up a new Gmail address on behalf of an association I'm doing some work for. As is my habit, I went through the personalisation options and opted out of letting Google trawl through this account's browsing history, YouTube history, message content, location, recommendations, etc, etc, etc.

And from the date of set-up until this afternoon, had a 100% failure rate for outgoing messages sent directly from the Gmail interface, all tagged with the info that their (google's) IP address was blacklisted by the recipient's ISP. Every one.

Messages routed through my own SMTP arrived at the destination without any problem.

This afternoon, I modified the privacy settings to allow Google spy on this account and voilà - suddenly all outgoing messages are being received as they ought to be.

Pure flukey coincidence, or does Google penalise people who actually want to preserve a degree of privacy?

If you want privacy, then you shouldn't be using google Microsoft apple Facebook and the other social platforms

Use protonmail if your somewhat serious about privacy, then use something similar for cloud platforms if looking to store material online.

Robert ninja

^

As above said. Google is the antithesis of privacy. As a company they spend 100s of millions every year and have a platoon of lawyers solely to erode your privacy and enhance their ability to extract user data. They get fined millions every year for privacy violations and continue to do it because the fines are cheaper than changing. Would you trust me if I said I've paid millions in criminal fines to stay out of jail and have no intention of stopping?

Use something else. That said I actually doubt the emails are failing on purpose for privacy reasons but stranger stuff has happened I suppose.

CelticRambler

Laviski wrote: »

If you want privacy, then you shouldn't be using google Microsoft apple Facebook and the other social platforms

As I said, I was setting this up for someone else, and it doesn't really need to be particularly private - nobody will be using the account for searching, browsing or YouTubing. It's just a habit for me to look for and opt out of choices that encourage these providers to try to "personalise" the experience based on what they think I (or others) need to be fed.

But I am now motivated to create some more pointless accounts with all the privacy opt-outs to see if those too have their messages sent via Google's blacklisted IP addresses. So far, it's 2 out of 2.