Forum Moderators: open
The Internet search firm insists that it needs to know what's in the e-mails that pass through its system -- so that they can be sprinkled with advertisements Google thinks are relevant.
Mod Note:
Several privacy related stories can be found here [news.google.com].
[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 8:37 pm (utc) on April 2, 2004]
oh pulease, are you just being contraditory on purpose? I put forth three areas where I feel Google wantonly violates privacy, and you ignore the issue to argue a tangential point.
Whatever my expectation, Google should not display my postings without my express permission. I did not opt-in to their system and they will not let me opt-out.
As far as my expectation (we're on the tangent here), I do not need to forsee every future technology and how malfeasors will use it to impact on my current actions. At the time, nothing of the sort existed. UseNet was likened to supermarket bulletin boards. Mass storage was on slow tape drives. These postings were mostly trivial mutterings without economic value. Even in Google's organized system most have little economic value. Lack of economic value is the only reason they can continue doing what they are doing, otherwise, people would sue and win for copyright infringement.
If Google wants to act in good faith, they should delete all postings prior to a certain period in time. This is not a historical record, it is intellectual theivery.
If you don't have a case in the USA, you could probably file suit in one of the other many countries that Googles does business in.
How about this scenario....
I write to someone ..I am not using gmail
....they ( the receivee ) copy / stick my "original copyright comment" ( which my mail is just like it was book or anything else ) into their "gmail" which they send out via "gmail" to someone else
..and google promptly archives their mail (which they agreed to in the "gmail" tos ( but which I didn't agree to ..not having signed up to gmail )...which contains my text or picture or sound file or whatever..
Googles archive now contains my intellectual property ..without google being in possesion of my express written permission ..( which is then expressly against all the international copyright treaties that are in the main ratified and updated in Switzerland and which applies in the USA ..Switzerland and India )....
where "g" now has a home...
.....( Drift off topic here ...for those who wondered .."what are they doing opening in Switzerland"...profits on goods or services exported from Switzerland are not liable to tax ....adwords etc are services ...geeks they are ..dumb geeks they are not ..return to topic )........
I discover this and send cease and desist to "g" ....
I add claim for copyright infringement ...
"G" reply with ...."hey you remind me of Scarecrow or Everyman or Kackle ..."...( translated ..."how do you expect us to make so much money with no dissenting voices if you keep poking fun at us" ....and plus thinly disguised innuendo is better than answering genuine concerns of this forum any day huh "gg" )...
On googles past record on copyright we have strong reason to be concerned ...
and message # 78 was just lowering the tone here ...and surprising!........
Maybe people should include in their email signatures a cease and desist notice. Wonder if Google could get the EFF to help them fight off the chilling effect.
Maybe everyone who emails to someone with a gmail account should receive a licensing fee for using their intellectual property for ad targetting. Google's intended use of others creative work certainly seems to violate any standards of fair use.
it's a bit of a conundrum alright. say i have a newsletter about widgets, and i get a bunch of gmail people subscribing to it.
i don't get any revenue from gmail click-thru's , but the ads are being generated in response to content of my newsletter.
maybe google might allow an adsense program for newsletter people i.e. insert adsense javascript for gmail subscribers, don't bother doing so for normal subscribers.
thereby, the adword actually appears in the BODY of the newsletter. I'd be happy with that quite honestly.
Maybe the issues break-down as follow:
storage of deleted email = privacy violation
any targetting use of content (automated or not) = copywrite violation
Monopolosoft is astroturfing again!
Look at the facts. (1) The evil empire is trying to "embrace and extinguish" search engines. They are several months away from their first version, which will naturally be as high a quality as version 1.0 of their other products. They will attempt to impose that product on everyone by leveraging their OS and browser monopolies to make it much less convenient to use search engines, and much more convenient to use their monetized database of their customers' commercial webpages. Well, you could figure all that out even wearing a baseball cap. Here's the tricky part.
What is their worst problem? When monopolosearch comes out, if it is perceived to be substantially worse than Google, people will go to the inconvenience -- no matter how inconvenient they make it -- of switching to Google: and they won't come back, even if monopolosearch version 3.1 is good enough for the half of the population on the imbecile wing of the Bell curve.
So what's the solution? Forget reality, and bring out the paid PR shills to astroturf the perception. Don't bother to try to improve monopolosoft's reputation -- they've tried astroturfing that and it doesn't work. The only thing left is to slander the competition.
And Google is really competing. The difference between the free beneficial service google mail is proposing, and the fee-for-service hotmail accounts monopolosoft is counting on to lock in more customers, is so significant, who in their right mind would ever look at hotmail again?
Microsoft is running scared. This has a bigger potential to hurt MSN than anything seen recently, and therefore the paid shills must be out in force. All you have to do is watch for them.
(1) Anyone who lambasts Google specifically, for doing with e-mail exactly what's always been done by everybody with all networked communications, is shilling.
(2) Anyone who lambasts Google for a TOS that actually describes what they do, is shilling -- how much does Microsoft tell you about when and how they purge your e-mail? Exactly. To the monopolists, honest disclosure is frightening, and they'll attack anyone who tries it.
(3) Anyone who acts suspicious specifically of Google's security, given Microsoft's record in the same field, is either totally insane, or a Microsoft shill.
OK, I'll take the tinfoil hat off. I shouldn't be attributing to monetized malice what could adequately be explained otherwise. But for my own benefit, I really like to know who's installing the astroturf over my flower beds.
One is the scanning of email by machine, and the likelihood that over time this amounts to profiling.
Another concern raised is that the content of emails will be stored after they are deleted. Privacy advocates believe that when you delete an email, you should be assured that it is 100 percent nonrecoverable by anyone or anything.
A third concern is over Google's use of cookies. Specifically, its ability to link personal details from a user's email registration to their online surfing patterns. Right now, the box where you enter your current email address to receive update information about how to get an Gmail account, is hosted on google.com. This means that the very act of entering your email address will cause your browser to offer up the main Google cookie from your web searching. Google saves your search terms, your IP address, a time stamp, and your unique cookie ID whenever you do a Google search.
Even if your Gmail account ends up getting hosted on gmail.com, by then Google will have perhaps a few hundred thousand "personally identifiable" Google cookie IDs due to this signup form. Moreover, there are ways to cross-correlate two cookies from two different domains, even if Google took the trouble to separate gmail.com from google.com. One way is to use a web bug on gmail.com to fetch an image from google.com, and construct the URL so that JavaScript slaps a cookie ID from gmail.com to the PATH_INFO before the image call is made. That way both cookie IDs arrive at google.com at the same time.
Even without a gmail cookie, it's possible to have two synchronized servers at gmail.com and google.com and match up identical IP numbers that arrive within the same five-second period.
According to the Los Angeles Times (2 April 2004):
"Larry Page wouldn't say whether Google planned to link Gmail users to their Web search queries. 'It might be really useful for us to know that information' to make search results better, he said. 'I'd hate to rule anything like that out.' "
Scarecrow, is that you? You really remind me of this fellow Everyman that used to post around here. Then Everyman stopped posting and this new fellow Kackle started posting. I haven't seen Kackle around for a while lately, but you remind me of him. :)
GoogleGuy, your obsession with tracking me is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
If you pay very close attention to everything that Matt has said in the forums over time, combined with everything that others have said that Matt said at meetings, plus every paranoid (justified or not) remark make by www posters regarding their fear of G, and put it all together.... well it makes for a very interesting story about G, G tracking users, G trying to ID SEO people, Matt tracking WWW posters, etc. Does it make for a pretty-convincing conspiracy theory, or just chance coincidence? It would indeed be sad if, in their feeding frenzy, the public media jumped to conclusions about G based on such a combination of circumstantial evidence and presumptuous conclusions.
One can't deny the media's penchant for feeding frenzies, and with this latest G privacy issue, perhaps G will get a taste the privacy invading tracking medicine this time?
Imparting intent is a bad, bad idea in any context, whether it's based on tracking cookies or reading into Matt's comments. Peace.
* apologies for this expression, it's so passe :)
zeus
Can you tell me, please, who is running the show over there? Or perhaps no one knows?
Anyway, we need this new firewall language in the privacy policy, assuming it's not merely Rosing's spin. That way there is clear liability on Google's part if it is violated. Rosing also says that "hundreds of thousands" have put their email address into that little box so far. Ouch!
What does G in Gmail stand for? Is it Googol bytes?
... but until we can actually see a t.o.s. agreement I think the open criticism is overblown at this stage
>>What does G in Gmail stand for?
I would guess, it stands for Google as in GoogleMail and i read somewhere they preffered Gmail since it was shorter.
If I were you, I would wait before honking horns.
Sure, I'll notify all the privacy advocates that they should shut up because Google might see the light of reason, and the wisdom of corporate responsibility may be revealed to them, as long as everyone is sufficiently quiet and stops criticizing them, so that they can think and see clearly, during this difficult process of formulating plans for world conquest. Okay, consider it done. Sorry to have been such a bother.
If I were you, I'd read a few history books.
(MSN 'Inside MSNBC.COM' top stories)
11:07pm ET, Tue Apr 6
• Privacy advocates target Google mail
• E-voting firm reveals source code
• Forbes: Tips to avoid an IRS audit
• Residents to determine Wal-Mart fate ¦ Video
• Mountain lions not so shy after all
• Cross-dressing photos don't stop candidate
Way to go Google... lol The 'Greedy Mail' 'suits' must be getting real tight around the neck about now. I hear they can outsource a good white collar high tech 'suit' for about 1/16th the salary from India these days.
Sure, I'll notify all the privacy advocates that they should shut up because Google might see the light of reason,
I don't think that he said that privacy advocates should shut up, I think it was more in the line of don't convict google of privacy violations before it is even open to the public.
There is a difference between voicing an opinion, asking for clarification, and seeming to declare Google guilty of having already violated your privacy by considering an offering of email service to those that might be interested in it at a future date.
and the wisdom of corporate responsibility may be revealed to them,
I know that you hate Google, but they are one of the most responsible multi-billion dollar companies around.
Yeah, there should be people watching them. Unfortunately, too many of the people watching google are conspiracy theorist types that have little business sense or grasp of the legal system.
as long as everyone is sufficiently quiet and stops criticizing them, so that they can think and see clearly, during this difficult process of formulating plans for world conquest.
I have some pictures of Google on the grassy knoll for you.
If I were you, I'd read a few history books.
I have quite a few.
The history of abuse of power is always disturbing.
So is the history of the persecution of those that "might do someting in the future". You know, we should lock up all those japanese-americans in concentration camps because they or their ancestors chose to leave a country that we are at war with. They are sure to be spies.
Quite honestly, if you are really concerned about privacy, you should spend more time pushing for the WWW to totally switch over to 128 bit encryption.
How about fighting for laws that restrict the use of your social security number from being used for anything other than government business. Banks, credit reporting agencies, schools and credit card companies abuse this important information far worse than Google finding out about your addiction to cheesy-poofs.
You do realize that your e-mail at work is subject to the same thing? Do you realize that when you delete an e-mail on your own server that it is still there until the data is overwritten, don't you?
Voice your concerns, but don't convict google until there is an explanation. And if you don't like the explanation, then simply don't use the service.
The difference between Google and MSN here, is that Google tells you up front. And MSN apparently doesn't. I see that as a significant moral difference -- in Google's favor. Now, for anyone who knows anything about how e-mail works, it wasn't NECESSARY to say that (they could have figured it out), and for the usual casual user, it wasn't SUFFICIENT (they won't read the TOS, and won't care, so long as they get their e-mail); but for business types that don't know beans about computers but want to use them to do their jobs, that may be an important issue: and for them, Google gives the caveat.
I'm as ready to see the seamy side of the internet as the next person, but I don't see the Hand of Mordor in this one.
And as for analyzing mail--ISPs are already having to do that and similar intrusive things for spam prevention. That is only going to get worse. The FBI has their e-mail spy system in place, and that's going to get more pervasive (if the Communist-sponsored terrorism of the 60s is any indication, terrorism is going to get worse until the people at the top of the systems sponsoring it lose credibility in their slaves' eyes; and that is probably a few years away yet.) This isn't going to be a big deal.
As for cookies, I'm as paranoid about cookies as anyone you'll ever see: I look at every cookie that goes across my desktop, and my browser has over 12 times as many "sites forbidden to set cookies" as it does cookies. And this is as close to a non-issue as I've ever seen. Google works fine without them.
If you don't want the cookie, just block the bloody cookie. If your piece-of-junk-excuse-for-a-browser can't block cookies on a per-site basis, download a Mozilla build. And that's an end to it. There's no need for a federal case (unless you're a Microsoft shill concerned about maintaining the monopoly).
And anyone who's not spending 23 hours and 59 minutes a day screaming about IE security (has none, never had, never will, invariably opens every software-configurable item on your system to any web page in the universe...and outlook is worse) can't whisper a word about Google privacy without sounding like a flaming hypocrite. There is simply no comparision.
You're sitting in a swamp, complaining to high heaven because the Google dog-cage isn't keeping the the mosquitoes out of the kitchen, when Microsoft employees are doing hourly free-releases of genetically engineered bloodsuckers in your living room. Unless you're getting paid for shilling, it doesn't make sense.
I see in Google now what I recognized in Microsoft back in 1997. Actually, I recognized it much earlier with Microsoft, when they started discontinuing DOS development software back in 1991 or so, because they wanted to lock in Windows. I should have started screaming back then, but as I recall, even in 1997 it was quite difficult fighting off the Microsoft lovers. My position was not popular. Lots of folks grumbling about tin-foil hats and such.
I'll never forgive myself for not jumping on Microsoft earlier. It was much too late in 1997 to have much influence on the issue. That's what you get for going with the flow. I'm not going to make the same mistake with Google.
I'll never forgive myself for not jumping on Microsoft earlier. It was much too late in 1997 to have much influence on the issue. That's what you get for going with the flow. I'm not going to make the same mistake with Google.
Google does not have power like that nor will they for at least a long time.
Google can get crushed by Yahoo right now and if I recall right Microsoft was ahead of every one. We should be more worried about Yahoo then Google!
I'll never forgive myself for not jumping on Microsoft earlier. It was much too late in 1997 to have much influence on the issue. That's what you get for going with the flow. I'm not going to make the same mistake with Google.
Not that this has anything to do with Google or Gmail, and I really don't want to get in a p*****g contest with you, but I think I posted my first anti-microsoft diatribe somewhare around 1979 when our high school started getting systems with that lousy Microsoft Basic instead of PT Basic.
When the PC came out in 81, and the XT shortly thereafter, I spent a great deal of effort showing people that Z80 based CP/M systems could boot faster, and run software faster from a floppy than those IBM systems running dos.
In 83 I worked on troff for early laser printers the size of desks. Microsoft hadn't even come up with the idea of printer drivers yet.
In 84 I worked for an OEM writing the BIOS for systems that ran virtual DOS windows on 286 systems using concurrent CP/M.
I worked for a company where we wrote our own C compiler because all the ones on the market including MS were crap.
And that was all 15+ years before you "published".
Sorry, but Google is no Microsoft, nor is it pre-90s IBM.
Your complaints are about what Google *might* do, whereas the problem with MS, IBM, NCR and Standard Oil is what they *did* do. Do you see the difference?
While Google's actions do bear watching (as do all billion dollar companies), until they actually abuse their position, they have done nothing wrong. You know, that whole innocent until proven guilty thing.
<added>But all that aside, bringing MS into this is simply a non sequitur. At least so far, Gates and Balmer do not run Google.</added>
