the tl:dr of this comment thread is that most HN'ers have sadly taken the question too literally and are commenting on the fact Google reads emails with a definition of "read" being that of "parse" (ie computationally). I think most people know and expect they obviously do that, for advertising targeting etc. I can't believe people are shocked or surprised at that.
Which is a shame because I think it's pretty clear the OP is actually asking about Google employees reading your email, which is a valid question but sadly lost in the fight over semantics. :/
> Which is a shame because I think it's pretty clear the OP is actually asking about Google employees reading your email
Unless you run your own smtp and pop/imap mail servers, there is no way to be sure no one will read your emails. Even then, your servers could get hacked or maybe your contacts use a hosted solution (and most people do) that could get hacked, there is again no guaranty. The only work around is to fully encrypt your emails, even then someone could steal your private keys, or you could be using an unpatched encryption software etc.
It's a matter of trust and time saving. Do you trust google, yahoo employees etc to not spy on you more than you trust your ability and your contacts ability not to get your mail servers hacked? How much of your time and money are you ready to waste maintaining such a server?
The real question is not whether google, dropbox or anyone else has explicit "policies" about reading content from users. They're just going to say whatever makes them look good from a marketing and legal perspective. Companies lie all the time, systematically and comprehensively. They act in their own self-interest period. From their point of view it is merely a question of how much they can get away with.
The more interesting question to explore is how much we actually trust these companies with our personal information and how do we decide when we reach a limit to our trust.
Do I believe that google can read my gmail? Yes. Do I think this capability will cause harm to come to me as a result? Hell no. There's nothing "in it" for them to do so for me or millions of others. I "trust" them for this reason.
Speaking of trusting google... there was a situation at a company I worked at where the management strongly was against transferring the company mail system to google apps/mail because of the concern of google may read their email. They wanted to keep their internal mail infrastructure for privacy reasons of the company.
The cto at the time convinced them that there is really no point of keeping things inhouse since the majority of the management, for convenience, forwarded all their company email to their personal gmail account anyways.
Funny how security is not about what you think but what you do.
It's a pretty classic security question, sometimes usability means that you accept zero security and completely share your private correspondence with the world.
I think trust is the wrong word, you are really just accepting the risk of sharing all your data for the benefits because the risk is low.
Imagine you're a startup and use gmail or Google Apps for your team communications, even customer service. One day Google decides it wants to acquire you. During negotiations, it has access to all email exchanges between you and your customers and, more importantly, you and your investors / team members. So there's definitely something "in it" for them to do so.
Even if you trust a company not to do you harm with the information they store, there exist entities that can compel them to turn this information over. For example, the information can be (sometimes secretly) subpoenaed by the U.S. government.
The choice between being evil and not being evil can be an easier one to make, practically speaking, than the choice between being evil and becoming the target of federal criminal prosecution.
Exactly. And that applies to any company not just "evil" ones. It is a bit naive to trust something as abstract as an organization. Trust applies to individual people, and a company is bound to be a very diverse group of people with different agendas.
If you want your mail to be reasonably safe from third-party reading, the only solution is to encrypt it before sending, and ask people that mail you to do the same. Anything that relies on trust is a half-assed solution.
No, but automatic scanning and filtering technology is at the heart of Gmail. Gmail scans and processes all messages using fully automated systems in order to do useful and innovative stuff like filter spam, detect viruses and malware, show relevant ads, and develop and deliver new features across your Google experience. Priority Inbox, spell checking, forwarding, auto-responding, automatic saving and sorting, and converting URLs to clickable links are just a few of the many features that use this kind of automatic processing.
In other words, Google IS most certainly "reading" your email, at the very least with computers, for various purposes.
Google made a related statement last year when they fired an employee for unauthorized access to private data including emails.
"We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls–for example, we are significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to ensure those controls are effective. That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly ..."
The same can be said about any IT department. One of my friends sent made the news papers over sending a racially shared joke through the email system to the "boys joke list" in a rather large and respected company.
Turns out some people in the IT department where also helping themselves to the list as a source of entertainment, one of them took extreme offense to the joke and reported it.
After the thing went through its investigation process it was uncovered that the majority of disliked staff in the department where infact reading everyones email. Most of them had set up notification filters to flag emails with there names to see what people where saying about them.
Now the question is how common is this considering how easy it is to do... and how the whole system more or else runs off trust?
I'd say if you have sensitive stuff going through your email that you don't want external parties to see, set up your own server and find someone who isn't petty to look after it.
For an IT department the expectation is that people will read your email. I honestly don't think what you describe is rare at all, based on stories I've heard.
And if you work for the gov't your email can often be requested by citizens via FOIA.
Has there been anyone working to make a comprehensive locally-hostable webmail/weboffice suite that replicates Google's functionality? I can imagine that this would be quite poular. Sure, some of the features like Priority Inbox might require complex heuristics, but things like labels should be easy to add support for.
How many individuals at google have the ability to read a particular person's personal data? If I'm a moderately important person[1], how many individuals, in or outside of google, will have access to any of that data over the life of it? And, how does google internally police against misuse? And, who watches the watchman?
[1] say, 1 in a thousand, of which google has 260,000 such gmail users
Probably about 50 altogether. Each of us promises to never ever look at personal data, before being granted privileges. And I'm pretty sure all those promises are serious.
I don't know how enforcement works, though a single offense would be firing-worthy.
> here’s a strange little story that happened to me a while ago – I set up a gmail account to deal with nigerian letters and such (I wanted to collect some data to report the spammers/thieves, without compromising my actual e-mail address in the process). I set this up with a fake username (something like george.thompson or so) and a password which included the word “nigeria” in it. Lo and behold, after my first login (before sending/receiving any mail) the targeted advertising in gmail included some nigerian ads (nigerian holidays, nigerian business bureau, etc). coincidence?….
If true, it seems they matched ads to the guy's password. Which means they needed to be able to read it plain text. The plain text should only ever live long enough to create or match with a hash.
I think the experiment would only be illustrative if the computer had zero past Internet use (ie no cookies) and the ip address was brand new. Surely google tracks even if you don't have an account.
A few weeks ago I had a situation where Facebook contacted me about a job, and it appeared that Facebook may have been reading (or at the least mining) private messages related to my startup (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3035376). A Facebook employee replied to the thread but wouldn't provide details.
(I am neither a Facebook employee nor can I speak for them.)
I really think that was just coincidence. Considering how many people talk about startups over Facebook messages and how many people have been contacted by Facebook recruiters, there's bound to be at least one person who was contacted by a Facebook recruiter a day or two after talking about startups. It'll seem mighty suspicious to that person, and they'll blog about it. Congratulations, you're the lucky one.
Companies that big just generally don't do things like read private e-mail, because they know it'll get out somehow - disgruntled employee, whistleblower - and the damage to their reputation is totally not worth whatever they can gain from it.
"Folks: The problem with Google promising to hold “personal information” confidential is that a document may not meet the definition of “personal information” given in http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy/faq.html#toc-terms-per... . For example, if you write down some ideas for a new product and keep it as a Google Doc there may be nothing in the document that identifies you as the author and therefore it might be okay for Google to read or distribute the document.
Generally speaking the Google privacy docs address a separate issue from the question of keeping email or documents confidential. They are about the question of whether your identify is kept confidential when you’re browsing around the Web and Google is figuring out what your interests and demographics are. Worthy stuff to be writing about, no doubt, but it doesn’t shed much light on the subject of whether a Google employee can copy and paste paragraphs from your email messages or Google docs."
Google should provide the option of automatically encrypting your incoming email with your public PGP key, if you provide one. They could similarly automatically encrypt your Sent folder (not the actual sent messages). That way, even if your account is compromised, or emails subpoenaed, they can't read the emails without your private key.
(Although off the top of my head, they do say they will automatically scan all email for the purposes of advertising, spam filtering, etc. and the debate used to be "does this count as reading if no human is involved?").
It is probably pointless for Google to use humans to read mails, especially the mails of regular people. And it is certain that they use automated processing of the information in the mails.
A most relevant question would be: Does Google match the profiles of its mail users to high profile people, such as company managers or other rich people who can be easily found on, for example, Linkedin? If so, does Google automatically filter their email in order to predict, for example, the stock market?
I don't think terms provide too much assurance - maybe they're only really useful if legal recourse ensues.
There will always be the possibility of a rogue employee who goes out of his or her way to read data that doesn't belong to them.
In the case of Dropbox - to prevent this possibility - we can encrypt our data if we choose to (I've successfully used 'encfs' in the past). In the case of Google's email and document services I don't think this is possible?
We may collect the following types of information:
<snip>
User communications – When you send email or other communications to Google, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services. When you send and receive SMS messages to or from one of our services that provides SMS functionality, we may collect and maintain information associated with those messages, such as the phone number, the wireless carrier associated with the phone number, the content of the message, and the date and time of the transaction. We may use your email address to communicate with you about our services.
<snip>
In addition to the above, we may use the information we collect to:
Provide, maintain, protect, and improve our services (including advertising services) and develop new services;
and
Protect the rights or property of Google or our users.
If we use this information in a manner different than the purpose for which it was collected, then we will ask for your consent prior to such use.
Uh, that privacy policy (or at least the snippets you posted) provide NO explicit assurances that Google is not reading your stuff. At all.
It tells you what they WILL do. And it says if they decide to "use" (vague) "this information" (vague) in other ways, they'll ask for consent. Does simply reading it count as "using" it? Google doesn't say.
The section you've excerpted could be interpreted as saying that Google does reserve the right to have both its software and personnel read your email in order to "[p]rovide, maintain, protect, and improve our services (including advertising services) and develop new services; and Protect the rights or property of Google or our users."
Which is, more or less, for any reason whatsoever except those already blatantly illegal (harassment, blackmail, etc.).
That's why I got my own domain. Coupled with offlineimap (or any other mail backuping software) running regularly, I can move from Gmail to any other provider in the time it takes to create a new account and update the MX records.
Aren't emails subject to the legal definition of private correspondence and therefore protected from this kind of behaviour? (I believe this is the case in France, Italy, Spain or Germany)
[+] [-] dotBen|14 years ago|reply
Which is a shame because I think it's pretty clear the OP is actually asking about Google employees reading your email, which is a valid question but sadly lost in the fight over semantics. :/
[+] [-] patrickaljord|14 years ago|reply
Unless you run your own smtp and pop/imap mail servers, there is no way to be sure no one will read your emails. Even then, your servers could get hacked or maybe your contacts use a hosted solution (and most people do) that could get hacked, there is again no guaranty. The only work around is to fully encrypt your emails, even then someone could steal your private keys, or you could be using an unpatched encryption software etc.
It's a matter of trust and time saving. Do you trust google, yahoo employees etc to not spy on you more than you trust your ability and your contacts ability not to get your mail servers hacked? How much of your time and money are you ready to waste maintaining such a server?
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] angdis|14 years ago|reply
The more interesting question to explore is how much we actually trust these companies with our personal information and how do we decide when we reach a limit to our trust.
Do I believe that google can read my gmail? Yes. Do I think this capability will cause harm to come to me as a result? Hell no. There's nothing "in it" for them to do so for me or millions of others. I "trust" them for this reason.
[+] [-] necro|14 years ago|reply
The cto at the time convinced them that there is really no point of keeping things inhouse since the majority of the management, for convenience, forwarded all their company email to their personal gmail account anyways. Funny how security is not about what you think but what you do.
[+] [-] freshhawk|14 years ago|reply
It's a pretty classic security question, sometimes usability means that you accept zero security and completely share your private correspondence with the world.
I think trust is the wrong word, you are really just accepting the risk of sharing all your data for the benefits because the risk is low.
[+] [-] herbivore|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcdreads|14 years ago|reply
The choice between being evil and not being evil can be an easier one to make, practically speaking, than the choice between being evil and becoming the target of federal criminal prosecution.
[+] [-] wladimir|14 years ago|reply
If you want your mail to be reasonably safe from third-party reading, the only solution is to encrypt it before sending, and ask people that mail you to do the same. Anything that relies on trust is a half-assed solution.
[+] [-] heyrhett|14 years ago|reply
So, he's looking for a more elaborate answer? This is PhilG, so I should cut him some slack, but it seems pretty clear to me.
[+] [-] Bud|14 years ago|reply
What that document actually says is this:
No, but automatic scanning and filtering technology is at the heart of Gmail. Gmail scans and processes all messages using fully automated systems in order to do useful and innovative stuff like filter spam, detect viruses and malware, show relevant ads, and develop and deliver new features across your Google experience. Priority Inbox, spell checking, forwarding, auto-responding, automatic saving and sorting, and converting URLs to clickable links are just a few of the many features that use this kind of automatic processing.
In other words, Google IS most certainly "reading" your email, at the very least with computers, for various purposes.
[+] [-] abraham|14 years ago|reply
"We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls–for example, we are significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to ensure those controls are effective. That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly ..."
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fire...
[+] [-] rjd|14 years ago|reply
Turns out some people in the IT department where also helping themselves to the list as a source of entertainment, one of them took extreme offense to the joke and reported it.
After the thing went through its investigation process it was uncovered that the majority of disliked staff in the department where infact reading everyones email. Most of them had set up notification filters to flag emails with there names to see what people where saying about them.
Now the question is how common is this considering how easy it is to do... and how the whole system more or else runs off trust?
I'd say if you have sensitive stuff going through your email that you don't want external parties to see, set up your own server and find someone who isn't petty to look after it.
[+] [-] kenjackson|14 years ago|reply
And if you work for the gov't your email can often be requested by citizens via FOIA.
[+] [-] w1ntermute|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gujk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ap22213|14 years ago|reply
[1] say, 1 in a thousand, of which google has 260,000 such gmail users
[+] [-] dspeyer|14 years ago|reply
I don't know how enforcement works, though a single offense would be firing-worthy.
[+] [-] sixtofour|14 years ago|reply
> here’s a strange little story that happened to me a while ago – I set up a gmail account to deal with nigerian letters and such (I wanted to collect some data to report the spammers/thieves, without compromising my actual e-mail address in the process). I set this up with a fake username (something like george.thompson or so) and a password which included the word “nigeria” in it. Lo and behold, after my first login (before sending/receiving any mail) the targeted advertising in gmail included some nigerian ads (nigerian holidays, nigerian business bureau, etc). coincidence?….
If true, it seems they matched ads to the guy's password. Which means they needed to be able to read it plain text. The plain text should only ever live long enough to create or match with a hash.
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ap22213|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nopal|14 years ago|reply
He'd have to have a sterile browsing environment to ensure his ads weren't related to something else on Google's ad network.
[+] [-] alastair|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curiouskat|14 years ago|reply
A few weeks ago I had a situation where Facebook contacted me about a job, and it appeared that Facebook may have been reading (or at the least mining) private messages related to my startup (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3035376). A Facebook employee replied to the thread but wouldn't provide details.
[+] [-] nostrademons|14 years ago|reply
I really think that was just coincidence. Considering how many people talk about startups over Facebook messages and how many people have been contacted by Facebook recruiters, there's bound to be at least one person who was contacted by a Facebook recruiter a day or two after talking about startups. It'll seem mighty suspicious to that person, and they'll blog about it. Congratulations, you're the lucky one.
Companies that big just generally don't do things like read private e-mail, because they know it'll get out somehow - disgruntled employee, whistleblower - and the damage to their reputation is totally not worth whatever they can gain from it.
[+] [-] espeed|14 years ago|reply
"Folks: The problem with Google promising to hold “personal information” confidential is that a document may not meet the definition of “personal information” given in http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy/faq.html#toc-terms-per... . For example, if you write down some ideas for a new product and keep it as a Google Doc there may be nothing in the document that identifies you as the author and therefore it might be okay for Google to read or distribute the document.
Generally speaking the Google privacy docs address a separate issue from the question of keeping email or documents confidential. They are about the question of whether your identify is kept confidential when you’re browsing around the Web and Google is figuring out what your interests and demographics are. Worthy stuff to be writing about, no doubt, but it doesn’t shed much light on the subject of whether a Google employee can copy and paste paragraphs from your email messages or Google docs."
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2011/11/03/where-does-goo...
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|14 years ago|reply
That's exactly what I do on my system anyway. I host my own email as well though: https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...
[+] [-] jodrellblank|14 years ago|reply
http://www.quora.com/How-many-employees-does-Google-have and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail respectively.
(Although off the top of my head, they do say they will automatically scan all email for the purposes of advertising, spam filtering, etc. and the debate used to be "does this count as reading if no human is involved?").
[+] [-] ianferrel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kandu|14 years ago|reply
A most relevant question would be: Does Google match the profiles of its mail users to high profile people, such as company managers or other rich people who can be easily found on, for example, Linkedin? If so, does Google automatically filter their email in order to predict, for example, the stock market?
[+] [-] lwhi|14 years ago|reply
There will always be the possibility of a rogue employee who goes out of his or her way to read data that doesn't belong to them.
In the case of Dropbox - to prevent this possibility - we can encrypt our data if we choose to (I've successfully used 'encfs' in the past). In the case of Google's email and document services I don't think this is possible?
[+] [-] rarrrrrr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahi|14 years ago|reply
http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...
Even if they say they won't it looks like they are lacking some internal controls.
[+] [-] waitwhat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanlewis|14 years ago|reply
We may collect the following types of information:
User communications – When you send email or other communications to Google, we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services. When you send and receive SMS messages to or from one of our services that provides SMS functionality, we may collect and maintain information associated with those messages, such as the phone number, the wireless carrier associated with the phone number, the content of the message, and the date and time of the transaction. We may use your email address to communicate with you about our services. In addition to the above, we may use the information we collect to:Provide, maintain, protect, and improve our services (including advertising services) and develop new services; and Protect the rights or property of Google or our users.
If we use this information in a manner different than the purpose for which it was collected, then we will ask for your consent prior to such use.
[+] [-] Bud|14 years ago|reply
It tells you what they WILL do. And it says if they decide to "use" (vague) "this information" (vague) in other ways, they'll ask for consent. Does simply reading it count as "using" it? Google doesn't say.
I wouldn't trust these assurances at all.
[+] [-] gojomo|14 years ago|reply
Which is, more or less, for any reason whatsoever except those already blatantly illegal (harassment, blackmail, etc.).
[+] [-] amorphid|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ww520|14 years ago|reply
It seems for company using third party email hosting, it shouldn't be too inconvenient to set up a company-wide encryption on its emails.
[+] [-] ck2|14 years ago|reply
It's the warrantless backdoors installed for most government entities.
What you think is harmless to discuss is probably being auto-indexed by them to use against you if you ever become a "problem" (ie. protest war, etc.)
[+] [-] hugoroy|14 years ago|reply