"Should we care if Google reads our emails?"

cherryghost · 21-08-2013 09:35AM

NSA... don't trust anyone.

Wibbs · 21-08-2013 10:08AM

RoyalMarine wrote: »

Is there anything in particular you don't trust about Google?

I'm just curious.

In many ways they "own" the internet as far as most users are concerned and that's just too much power in the hands of one company. Especially when you read how the higher ups in the company feel about privacy. As they move from Google the search engine, to Google the all encompassing product across the board that worries me even more. Larry Page has already said this is the companies future. Now to achieve this they'll have to take what they do already with searches tailored to individuals online history and ramp that up massively across all online interactions and in the process they'll start to know more and more about individuals in order to tailor answers for them. I really don't like the idea of that kinda future in the hands of one company.

Let's look at their recent record:

Had to pay half a billion quid to avoid prosecution by the US gov over illegal medical advertisements
Google bypassed default privacy settings in the iphone browser Safari
Stole another companies user database

Take a peek behind the mentality of it's higher ups. Larry Page has said “Why are people so focused on keeping their medical history private”? Yea to a geek having all this data out there is "neat", meanwhile in the real world... These eejits even want t extend google search into genetic testing to build DNA databases. That's well scary shít.

Then again like facebook, it's not their fault, people are just so quick to give up all their info. They/we may all live to regret that.

Think about what Google(and Facebook) may know about you already if you've bought into the whole package.

They know what you read, watch and write(this thread sums up the latter). Who your friends are, where you go on the interwebs, where you live(even have a pic of your gaff), what genetic problems you may have, where you like to eat and drink. *shudder*

Dravokivich · 21-08-2013 10:17AM

Wibbs wrote: »

They know what you read, watch and write(this thread sums up the latter). Who your friends are, where you go on the interwebs, where you live(even have a pic of your gaff), what genetic problems you may have, where you like to eat and drink. *shudder*

This is one of the worst things ever as far as I'm concerned. It started before Google became the beast that it is. But there are so many websites now that invite you to create an account with your Google ID, Yahoo Acc, Facebook Acc, Linked In, Twitter... So it can load up your contacts lists. And ask you to "invite" any who aren't signed up, or associate your account to any who already are.

Eh... no thanks. I just wanted to take a look and see what this was.

Must say, it's great none of the porno sites get involved in that madness.

Shiny · 21-08-2013 10:44AM

I treat anything I put on the internet as something that potentially anyone could see. If I was handling sensitive data (think journalist, freedom fighter, hacker, etc..) then I would take steps to encrypt the information I was sending.

I read what Wibbs is saying and I suppose I don't appreciate that my personal information should also be regarded as sensitive data. I imagine if there was ever a world war, the fist step would be to hijack say google/facebook data and use their information to recruit/conscript/eliminate specialists who can develop weapons.

Dravokivich · 21-08-2013 10:46AM

Shiny wrote: »

I read what Wibbs is saying and I suppose I don't appreciate that my personal information should also be regarded as sensitive data. I imagine if there was ever a world war, the fist step would be to hijack say google/facebook data and use their information to recruit/conscript/eliminate specialists who can develop weapons.

How'd you think the terminator was able to identify John's friends in Terminator3? It was clearly his facebook friends list that they used.

Setun · 21-08-2013 11:07AM

DubVelo wrote: »

Eh... You haven't read the papers this year have you?

Bingo! For anybody who has been offline for the last few months, all the major 'free' web services are compliant with the NSA's extra-judicial surveillance programmes (except twitter, afaik!)

While I think that anybody who has reason to be cautious will simply avoid using third-party services as much as possible, if not completely, it's interesting to consider the oft-repeated general public reaction "I have nothing to hide". Probably true, in its current context. What is happening though is that Google are increasing their cache of data, and also honing their abilities to target you with increasing specificity. Google, facebook et al are masters at judging a balance between user-convenience and data collection - their TOS states that, by agreeing to the current terms, you also agree to all future iterations of the TOS. So their terms - and thus their liberties with your data - can shift, outside of what you either feel comfortable with or what you initially signed up for. By then though, they already have your cache, and the inconvenience and confusion of finding another reliable service on their side.

Setun · 21-08-2013 11:13AM

Shiny wrote: »

I imagine if there was ever a world war, the fist step would be to hijack say google/facebook data and use their information to recruit/conscript/eliminate specialists who can develop weapons.

Having spoken to a syrian activist who managed to escape the country recently, this is pretty much what is going on there at the moment. If they take in one person involved in anti-governmental activities, they very quickly have a social network of suspects next in line for questioning.

Red Nissan · 21-08-2013 12:25PM

Dostoevsky wrote: »

Surprisingly I can't see this on Boards.ie yet.

I'm getting tired of Google trying to link my gmail account to my entire online presence.

Absolutely agree, Google is not your friend, it's a monster that looks benign. It has, Youtube, Gmail, Chrome, Sketch Up, Google Search, Google Maps and many more to watch out for.

I've switched to GMX mail recently and opened a Vimeo account. I'm also surfing under various cloaking systems and so forth.

Google is the best, but like you, I like to chat here and have an identity. My Youtube account is closed because Google shut it down when I refused to join Google Plus. I have a channel for my various interests and GoogleTube insisted on all my ids being merged.

Far too much of my life is in Google and I don't believe it's just for showing me an ad, my adblocker programmes does a great job in defeating them anyway.

I intend to join private VPN networks and pay for privacy, it's seemingly a big thing in the US especially as a few innocent people got interviewed by security forces in the states and the info came from Google.

jaykay12 · 21-08-2013 12:48PM

Setun wrote: »

.....they very quickly have a social network of suspects next in line for questioning.

It's frightening.
And the "I have nothing to hide" brigade simply don't foresee the potential implications for such a database, which essentially has the ability, if required by the owners (eg NSA) to create an entire picture of a person's online presence, search history. They can then blackmail, smear, whatever they want to discredit political figures, commercial rivals, dissenters........it seems a little dystopic, but why else are they doing it? Terrorism??!?! Hardly.

It's an insurance against potential future dissent.

Four years ago, I'd have been labelled another conspiracy theory loon. What happens when conspiracy becomes fact (as has happened with the Snowden releases)? The Govts involved panic. Arrest Journalists. Force a President's plane to divert. Up the threat level to orange.

This is happening.

Google aren't to blame. But they're far from innocent.

sbsquarepants · 21-08-2013 01:03PM

Shiny wrote: »

I treat anything I put on the internet as something that potentially anyone could see. If I was handling sensitive data (think journalist, freedom fighter, hacker, etc..) then I would take steps to encrypt the information I was sending.
.

This is the way i look at it. If you're going to put anything on the internet, be damn sure you'd be happy for every tom, dick and harry to see it because odds are they will. The internet never forgets!!
Picture 40 years from now, a succesfull business woman throws her hat in the ring and runs for president of Ireland only to be asked "didn't you suck a whole load of cocks in slane once?" This shít lasts forever, there is no going back!

Tiddlypeeps · 21-08-2013 01:03PM

I don't think there are many people here touting "I've nothing to hide", I'm certainly not anyway. I just don't think it's a bid deal because any information they have is information I've chosen to give them. The same with Facebook, all the outrage of the privacy issues are overblown in my opinion because they will only every have information on you that you have chosen to give to them. You don't have to use their services.

Christ the Redeemer · 21-08-2013 01:04PM

I personally do not give a ****. Though, if I had political aspirations I'd be nervous about anything I might have said over the years being used against me to either control me or ruin me.

stoneill · 21-08-2013 01:09PM

Can you imagine the poor b'stard in the CIA or NSA that has to look through all those e-mails with pictures of mickeys just to see if one of them contains the word bomb! Or is that just my e-mail like that.

ScumLord · 21-08-2013 03:11PM

Wibbs wrote: »

In many ways they "own" the internet as far as most users are concerned and that's just too much power in the hands of one company.

They're only in that position because they supply the best product though. It's not like they waged war or used underhanded corporate espionage (as far as I know) or other illegal activities to falsely put themselves at the top. They have the best service, that's mostly down to the data mining they do.

Especially when you read how the higher ups in the company feel about privacy. As they move from Google the search engine, to Google the all encompassing product across the board that worries me even more.

The thing is I can see the advantage of what they're doing, I can see the value of having all information easily accessible to everyone and anyone that wants it. I think the benefits of what google are doing could be immense in ways I can't fully understand. They're basically making a digital record of humanity.

These eejits even want t extend google search into genetic testing to build DNA databases. That's well scary shít.

Why should this information be restricted though? I've seen it recently with the bio punk movement. These are small labs open to whoever wants to use them to do whatever experiments they may want to do. The establishment is accusing these places of being centers for terrorism saying they could be making bioweapons but I see it as a good thing. This kind of information shouldn't be restricted to governments and corporations. Data is a resource now, as is biology. People should be learning everything they can about those resources because they will be very important in the future, the cats out of the bag at this stage so the more people that know how these things work the better so that they can't be abused by any smaller groups. The thing about google is that it's a service, when google finds data it sends it out to everyone that wants it.

They know what you read, watch and write(this thread sums up the latter). Who your friends are, where you go on the interwebs, where you live(even have a pic of your gaff), what genetic problems you may have, where you like to eat and drink. *shudder*

You say "they" and it conjures up an image of guys in a lab watching a screen that's showing a feed from your bathroom while you take a dump. Each individual is more or less lost in the sea of information, it would be as hard for the layperson to find an individual in that sea of data as it would be to find them in the real world. Maybe even harder.

DubVelo · 21-08-2013 03:32PM

jaykay12 wrote: »

It's frightening.
And the "I have nothing to hide" brigade simply don't foresee the potential implications for such a database, which essentially has the ability, if required by the owners (eg NSA) to create an entire picture of a person's online presence, search history. They can then blackmail, smear, whatever they want to discredit political figures, commercial rivals, dissenters........it seems a little dystopic, but why else are they doing it? Terrorism??!?! Hardly.

It's an insurance against potential future dissent.

Four years ago, I'd have been labelled another conspiracy theory loon. What happens when conspiracy becomes fact (as has happened with the Snowden releases)? The Govts involved panic. Arrest Journalists. Force a President's plane to divert. Up the threat level to orange.

This is happening.

Google aren't to blame. But they're far from innocent.

It's not insurance against potential future dissent.

It's a strategy to ensure US commercial and strategic dominance through industrial and political espionage on a vast scale and the influencing of local political and corporate policy in Europe and elsewhere in the US's favour.

Eoin · 21-08-2013 03:55PM

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

I don't think there are many people here touting "I've nothing to hide", I'm certainly not anyway. I just don't think it's a bid deal because any information they have is information I've chosen to give them. The same with Facebook, all the outrage of the privacy issues are overblown in my opinion because they will only every have information on you that you have chosen to give to them.

But the contents of an email from/to you and someone else is not information that someone's deliberately chosen to give them (other than by not reading the legal jargon). It's not even implicitly given to them, like "liking" a particular brand on Facebook.

I don't like the idea that they could potentially track that you bought something from a 3rd party using their checkout service, based on an advert that you clicked which was triggered by the contents of an email from someone who's in your family circle on Google plus - and that you searched for the item twice at home and once at work, while checking youtube for reviews.

True, you don't have to use their services but that's a bit of an easy thing to say. I think people are unaware of what a scary profile they can build up on you - just because they're not Apple or Microsoft and because they have a naff company motto.

There's no harm in people knowing exactly what information they have about you and how they use it.

Mr Benevolent · 21-08-2013 04:07PM

Couldn't be arsed who reads my emails, I have nothing to hide.

DubVelo · 21-08-2013 04:36PM

The Americans said PRISM was fine, nothing to worry about, it wasn't for spying on US citizens.
Implying it IS for spying on *all of us* then!

If that wasn't bad enough, Google are now claiming local laws do not apply to them because they're a US company.
This is what's made me lose any remaining trust in Google.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/19/google-privacy-laws-uk-lawsuit

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396809/Google-says-UK-law-power-Outrage-search-giant-bypassing-privacy-settings.html

DubVelo · 21-08-2013 04:38PM

Mr Benevolent wrote: »

Couldn't be arsed who reads my emails, I have nothing to hide.

So you'd publish all your emails on the internet then? What's your username and password?

hansfrei · 21-08-2013 04:45PM

You'd swear no-one works for the PRISM. Only computers scan my e-mails my ares.....

Like teh gards don't use pulse to look up the addresses of hot chicks from the Facebook or whatever.

Don't know what PRISM stands for, but pervert has to be one of those words they've initialised

jaykay12 · 21-08-2013 04:58PM

DubVelo wrote: »

It's a strategy to ensure US commercial and strategic dominance

Can't disagree, but it can be both.

The post I quoted cited mentioned an example of a Syrian national - and we can be damn sure the NSA/CIA or whatever form they take, have an active participation in the various civil wars and political issues throughout the Middle East, let alone politics in their own country.

It can act, at the very least, as a deterrent to any troublesome skullduggerers who dare question the authority, and consider revolt or civil disobedience.

But yeah, I agree with you on the commercial/strategic aspect.

todders · 21-08-2013 05:28PM

9/10 of what goes to my Gmail is spam anyway, knock yourselves out lads

Paramite Pie · 21-08-2013 07:18PM

Dostoevsky wrote: »

Do you mind me asking, why does this not bother you? I've a "joke" hotmail account from about 1997 which I give when I'm filling in forms etc. There's nothing personal there. My gmail is/has been my main account, however, so I'm much more concerned and now looking for an alternative.

For what it's worth, a computer can't literally 'read' like we do, it's just an algorithim that scans your email to find certain buzzwords, but it cannot understand or interpret your email which is what humans do while reading. No human eyes ever see your private emails. A computer cannot understand what it reads.

Advertisers then pay extra money to google to show an ad to a specific demographic, say college students (for example).

Advertisers don't get your personal information but trust google's algorithims to automatically detect that your a student and show you their add.

Also did you know that almost every email you send contains your IP address? Gmail is only of the few free email services that scramble your IP address and replace it with xxx's to protect your privacy. I trust them for this and many other reasons.

Amirani · 21-08-2013 07:21PM

Paramite Pie wrote: »

For what it's worth, a computer can't literally 'read' like we do, it's just an algorithim that scans your email for buzzwords to find certain words, but it cannot understand or interpret your email which is what humans do while reading. No human eyes ever see your private emails.

Advertisers then pay extra money to google to show an ad to a specific demographic, say college students (for example).

Advertisers don't get your personal information but trust google's algorithims to automatically detect that your a student and show you their add.

Also did you know that almost every email you send contains your IP address? Gmail is only of the few free email services that scramble your IP address and replace it with xxx's to protect your privacy. I trust them for this and many other reasons.

That's a pretty naive attitude to have. Google and others have been pretty open about the fact that they essentially share private emails with various US Government agencies.

Paramite Pie · 21-08-2013 07:44PM

^^ While I'm against that practice, unless my email contains the word bomb or any other buzzwords that trigger that security algorithim then it's highly unlikely any government US or otherwise will be reading my email.

The Boston bomber's emails were only read AFTER he was caught. And he was even under investigation at one point many months prior to that.

I really doubt google will hand over my emails to anyone, or that anyone will request them. It's only for people who are seriously suspected of being criminals/terrorists. And like you said Google are pretty open about it. If they denied doing it but went ahead anyways then that's much worse. It's proabably even mentioned in the user agreement I never read.

And I doubt the US gov want to sell me anything.

Sonics2k · 21-08-2013 11:27PM

NiallSparky wrote: »

That's a pretty naive attitude to have. Google and others have been pretty open about the fact that they essentially share private emails with various US Government agencies.

To be fair, they only handed them over after a warrant was issued.

Larry Page (and others) have been very clear on this.

Ontopic.

I'm not all that fussed, the whole 'Google can read my mails' thing is an exaggeration.

They're isn't a man sitting in an office reading the thousands of mails sent every second. It's simply an algorithm that parses for a keyword or particular phrase and then targets an add to a separate inbox in GMail.

Actually, because I was recently looking up holiday destinations, I got a mail in my ad box that linked to a hotel in Portugal, where I'll now be staying for 4 nights next month at half the cost of usual.

Depp · 21-08-2013 11:53PM

I dont really care about this whole big brother ****e everyones raving about...whats the big deal...same with the whole prism craic...the nsa know i look at memes and football scores...what an outrage...some people would want to get over themselves

Wibbs · 22-08-2013 09:53AM

ScumLord wrote: »

It's not like they waged war or used underhanded corporate espionage (as far as I know) or other illegal activities to falsely put themselves at the top.

They've had some well dodgy work practices in pursuit of their data mining. Remember the IP scandal where their google maps vans were mining wireless networks, public and private? Google wheeled out there usual "oh we didn't know/rogue elements in the staff" line when found out. Just like they did in the Kenyan "issue".

The thing is I can see the advantage of what they're doing, I can see the value of having all information easily accessible to everyone and anyone that wants it. I think the benefits of what google are doing could be immense in ways I can't fully understand. They're basically making a digital record of humanity.

Yep one of those ides that sounds "neat", but in practice may well be very bloody troubling. Especially if it's in the hands of a commercial company that choses what information it serves up. You'll often see people berate wikipedia for not being accurate, yet that's an organisation that is "open source", non commercial and not attached to governments, so it has the potential to be the digital record for humanity. If Google ran it? Jesus.

People are being blinded by how neat all this info is. Information is power. Take your medical/DNA records. That could affect your insurance status, maybe even your career prospects. Having all that power in the hands of one agency(no matter who they are) is not healthy for humanity.

You say "they" and it conjures up an image of guys in a lab watching a screen that's showing a feed from your bathroom while you take a dump. Each individual is more or less lost in the sea of information, it would be as hard for the layperson to find an individual in that sea of data as it would be to find them in the real world. Maybe even harder.

and

Paramite Pie wrote: »

For what it's worth, a computer can't literally 'read' like we do, it's just an algorithim that scans your email to find certain buzzwords, but it cannot understand or interpret your email which is what humans do while reading. No human eyes ever see your private emails. A computer cannot understand what it reads.

The big word here is "yet". What a computer system "understands" about you and me today is an order of magnitude of what they could "understand" a decade ago. In 20 years time? 30?

EG

Sonics2k wrote:

Actually, because I was recently looking up holiday destinations, I got a mail in my ad box that linked to a hotel in Portugal, where I'll now be staying for 4 nights next month at half the cost of usual.

That would have been in the realms of academic conjecture in 1999. Today the system reads S looking for holidays, will feed holiday offer to S. And this is going on with millions out there. If that isn't troubling I dunno what is. Oh sure holidays are harmless and S got a nice deal, but what about politics and using such systems to sway same?

Look at what has happened in Syria. People and groups have been rounded up because of who their online connections were.

Also did you know that almost every email you send contains your IP address? Gmail is only of the few free email services that scramble your IP address and replace it with xxx's to protect your privacy. I trust them for this and many other reasons.

So hiding your IP is of greater good than reading your emails? Eh... Wut?

Now one answer put forward is down to user choice. We can chose to opt out. Well... we can and we can't. Currently we can pretty much, but there may come the day soon when that won't be an option if you want to live as normal online and off. Employers are already starting to look at facebook profiles and other online history to judge candidates. How suspicious would they be if a candidate had none? What are they trying to hide? etc. Hell look at google maps. You can chose to have your home blurred out on their service and all that serves to do is highlight the blur in between people with "nothing to hide". It attracts more attention.

Like I said fast forward this stuff 20 years and it's not hard to imagine how malevolent forces could use all this. Imagine any such force in history with this kind of access to information about people. Stalin wouldn't have needed informants for his purges. Any resistance would have been smothered in it's cot. The genie is outa the bottle though. It's how we all deal with the genie is the question.

Wabbit Ears · 22-08-2013 10:15AM

If the price of free e-mail, Massive amounts of content on youtube, Online storage and all the other fantastic services google provide at no direct cost is that they machine read my e-mails so they can sell targeted advertising I sincerely don't care, its cheap at the price.

Its a cliché but its true that you and your advertising profile are the product that google sell. Accept it or get off the internet, those are your choices.

Sonics2k · 22-08-2013 10:24AM

But Wibbs, even here on boards we are targeted with ads. I get a tonne of religious themed ads because a lot of my reading is done in AA section of the site.

It's how companies make money if you don't pay a subscription.

Yahoo and other companies use the same methods as Google, it just so happens that Google is better at it so we focus on them more.

Edit
Don't get me wrong, I understand your point completely, but I'm genuinely not worried about Google trying to take over the world or sell me out to the Govt. And what happened in Syria would have happened regardless, they just used a new method.

"Should we care if Google reads our emails?"

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