Google & Gmail is NOT Your Friend

[jframe2]

Short-version- A federal judge ( Northern District Court of California) ruled Thursday that Google may be violating wiretap law when it scans the e-mails of non-Gmail users, allowing a lawsuit against the company to move forward.

The case is In re Google Inc. Gmail Litigation, 13-md-02430, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

This link is a good article and also contains Google's Motion to Dismiss the case. Link is- http://www.dailytech.com/Google+Yes+...ticle33184.htm.

Here is a partial quote from an article from Daily Tech- "As for those who haven't signed the (Google) ToS -- non-Gmail users sending a message to a Gmail account -- Google cites a highly controversial 1979 Supreme Court ruling -- Smith v. Maryland -- which said that citizens lose their "right" to privacy whenever they hand personal documents off to a third party. Former CEO and current executive chairman Eric Schmidt comments, "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it." "

Searching on the Forum did not reveal anything about this, so I thought I would throw out some links to various news media reporting the story-

- http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...52_story.html;

- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...-lawsuit.html;

SkyNet anyone!!

Information = Power!!

[Roothead]

Dude - you are back?

[jframe2]

Well, I have been checking-in off and on for the last few months.
Simple account, no PA.

Thought the Google Gmail thing was worth bringing out to the National Group.

Originally Posted by Roothead

Dude - you are back?

[Gotyour6]

Honestly if you dont think every email provider isnt doing this you are mistaken.

There is no such thing as free email.

[misterundo]

Indeed. They all do this.

It's called contextual and behavioral ad serving technology.

Google will win the lawsuit. There's precedent.

[zme]

Yes, they certainly all do it. It is just that Google is really really good at it and does it the best. Have you looked at the contextual ads from Google? It is uncanny just how much they know about you, the ads are so well targeted.
But I think there are privacy options in google to ask them to stop doing it.

[jframe2]

Glad to see people are reading and commenting on this post and possibly reading the links to the case.

Google et al, are getting away with this now because they were ahead of the curve and nobody spoke up about this invasion of privacy, gathering data, etc, etc.

There are several groups out there, one I like is Electronic Frontier Foundation, that are trying to put a cork back in this bottle or at least to get some standards about how our digital footprint is used.

Don't be a sheep, people.

Cheers!

[add197531]

I currently use www.duckduckgo.com for my web surfing. Is this browser as safe as I am led to believe?

[NiceAlpha]

Yes DuckDuckGo is safe. For Now. I have been unable to find anything that claims that they don't do what they say they do ( yes i use them too)

They don't host email like google does, all they are is strictly websearch

[jframe2]

Here is a link to an interesting article about subverting OCR email scanners-

An NSA Whiz Designs 4 Fonts to Foil Google’s All-Seeing Eye at-
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/09/...computer-cant/

Here's one with a bit more explanation about ZXX-
http://blogs.walkerart.org/design/20...e-nsa-privacy/


I, too, use DuckDuckGo. Have been for a while seems to do what it says.

Cheers!