Google will no longer scan Gmail to serve up personalized ads

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It’s a remarkable development. Martin Binkmann at gHacks reports that Google’s giving up on its email scanning. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if EU priva
[See the full post at: Google will no longer scan Gmail to serve up personalized ads]

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SueW, HiFlyer, Elly, Rock

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woody wrote:

Far as I know, Microsoft still scans the subject line in free Hotmail/Outlook.com mail accounts.

Any evidence or basis for that assertion?

“Outlook.com prioritizes your privacy and we do not scan the content of your email messages, attachments, address book, or other communications for the purpose of serving you ads. “
Privacy in Outlook.com

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Microsoft appear to be using their non-scanning of Outlook.com emails as an advertising tool.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/outlook-com/gmail/

Prioritize your privacy
Unlike Google, Microsoft prioritizes your privacy and doesn’t scan your email to serve you ads.

Mind you, they now need to reword that…

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SueW, HiFlyer

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See, inter alia,

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/07/microsoft-scroogled-google-gmail-outlook

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HiFlyer

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Instead of targeted advertising, it said it had planned to generate revenue through text ads on Outlook.com, which are related to interests in the subject lines of emails.

“The ads will only appear in the inbox, the company said, not once an email is opened. Microsoft won’t scan email content,” said the general manager of the Microsoft group that oversees Hotmail, Brian Hall.

Hmmm…

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HiFlyer

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Sometimes the subject line is the content of the message.

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HiFlyer

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@b

The content of emails may not be scanned by M$ but they can be collected by M$ through their Telemetry & Data collection features/updates, which is even worse.

Content. We collect content of your files and communications when necessary to provide you with the products you use. For example, if you receive an email using Outlook.com or Exchange Online, we need to collect the content of that email to deliver it to your inbox, display it to you, enable you to reply to it, and store it for you until you choose to delete it. Examples of this data include: the content of your documents, photos, music, or videos you upload to a Microsoft service such as OneDrive, as well as the content of your communications sent or received using Microsoft products such Outlook.com or Skype, including the:

subject line and body of an email,
text or other content of an instant message,
audio and video recording of a video message, and
audio recording and transcript of a voice message you receive or a text message you dictate.

.
https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement

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Bill C., MikeFromMarkham, HiFlyer

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As usual MS has phrased it very carefully:

1. “we do not scan the content of your email” – nothing about not scanning the subject line for the purpose of serving you ads

2. “we do not scan the content of your email messages …  for the purpose of serving you ads.” – this leaves open the possibility of scanning the content for other purposes

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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Elly, Fred, Bill C., HiFlyer, woody

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Some scanning is always appropriate — for example, scanning HTML or attachments for malware.

I go back to my old assertion — any company that wants to gather information about me should

• Ask for permission
• Tell me what’s being collected and how it’s used
• Give me a chance to review and contest collected data

Very simple. No company does it, far as I know.

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Fred, Bill C., rc primak, MikeFromMarkham, HiFlyer, Elly, samak, Kirsty

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And there you have it. Samak nailed it 100%.

ALWAYS reread any statement and agreement with a critical (some say paranoid) eye. Remember what is not there is NOT agreed to, and what is there is very specific. Never read into it for you or the drafter. Legalese is designed to bind and to exclude, not to be honest or beneficent.

When I worked, my employer had an initiative called “plain language” to make publications easier for readers navigate and read. To me it dumbed it down and resulted in more questions to be answered, especially when dealing with attorney inquiries.

My philosophy was if plain language is so great, I will fully support it when the legal office uses it, and laws are written in ‘plain language.’

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Elly, Fred

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This isn’t the end of Google’s ad targeting, though: information from search, YouTube, and virtually any other Google product you can think of will still be used to sell you that soap.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/google-stop-snooping-emails-target-ads-191628639.html
(screen-scraped from BGR News.)

These other Google products presumably include Google Drive and their online Office competitor apps.

-- rc primak

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SueW, HiFlyer

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Gmail scanning is relatively mild compared to system scanning in Windows 10.

If Google changed this to settle class-action suits, doesn’t this bode poorly for Windows 10?

CT

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Canadian Tech wrote:

Gmail scanning is relatively mild compared to system scanning in Windows 10.

Why? Does Windows 10 use the content of my documents for something?

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You don’t know, do you?

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But Canadian Tech does?

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When you first use Windows 10 and click that OK, you are signing an agreement that basically (my words) says, you grant Microsoft the right to look at and use any data stored on your computer, the things you do with it, the places you visit on the web and your hardware for any purposes it chooses and to share that with their “partners.”

I believe they have published the fact that they are collecting something like 1950 points of data on your Windows 10 computer.

Of course they tell you that your privacy is their concern. However, you’d better believe they will use it for any commercial purpose they can profit from.

I can just picture the day I am working on a spreadsheet with my financial plan and suddenly I see an ad for a local financial planner!

I do not nor will not ever use Windows 10. As far as I am concerned, Windows 7 was the last Windows OS. Windows 10 is an advertising and gaming platform that you get the privilege to pay good money for out of your pocket.

We need to realize that this is very different from Yahoo or Google. You have a choice to use them or not. Effectively (other than Apple, who does the same) you have no choice but to use Windows. Windows is an OS, not a web site.

I have asked a lawyer client of mine to review the agreement and offer me an opinion as to the usability of this OS for professions like law, medicine and all manner of consulting. Can some one in one of these professions use this platform without violating the trust their clients give them? Let alone the non-disclosure agreements they sign.

Just a few of these data elements can be found at:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic-level-windows-diagnostic-events-and-fields

I would appreciate better insight to this topic from others much more deeply involved than I.

CT

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Bill C., AlexEiffel, David F, SueW, Jan K., wdburt1, Kirsty

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While it isn’t for everybody, there is another alternative to Windows. I am using it right now. It’s called Desktop Linux. Granted, Ubuntu is not free of “telemetry”. But it is a lot more private than the current and proposed future iterations of Windows. And for many purposes, just as usable.

What my Ubuntu does not do, I use Windows 10 Pro with many privacy modifications to do. Mostly, that’s in the areas of presentations, entertainment and handling those few web sites which are not entertainment sites, but which my Linux does not handle well. Very few sites are set up this way.

-- rc primak

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Wasn’t part of a EULA somewhere in windows 10 saying it could “upload parts of your documents (aka files) to help you open them better”. Not sure if/how such a thing is implemented code wise.

Aka windows 10 not suitable in a hipaa environment.

Maybe such things are disclaimers for future plans.
Or maybe “this document didn’t open send the pdf’s meta data to microsoft to see what went wrong”
Or maybe “this document opened a little slow send it to microsoft”
Or maybe “the FBI needs all documents about ducks so send it to microsoft”

“We didn’t send your WHOLE document to microsoft, just the content”

Isn’t the subject line, headers, body, and attachments all _part_ of email?

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Google to Stop Scanning Gmail Inboxes for Advertising Purposes
By Catalin Cimpanu | June 24, 2017

 
Google announced yesterday plans to stop scanning users’ Gmail inboxes for advertising purposes, a decision that in theory should improve users’ privacy, but in reality, it does not.

For years, Google has shown ads inside Gmail. While in the beginning, these were random advertisements, as Google got better at its job it launched a new program that used machine learning to scan people’s emails, classify the user in various categories, and show targeted ads inside Gmail based on the user’s email content.
…
“Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change,” Greene said. “This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products. Ads shown are based on users’ settings. Users can change those settings at any time, including disabling ads personalization. G Suite will continue to be ad free.”
…
As many privacy experts have voiced their opinion on social media, a reason why Google is taking this action is to eliminate any bad press about Gmail privacy.
…
Currently, over 1.2 billion users use Gmail, while Google boasts with over 3 million businesses who use its enterprise offering G Suite.

 
Read the full article, which also discusses Google’s other means of profiling users, on bleepingcomputer.com.

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wow, I am so reassured right now , going to enjoy this day

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