geekhack
geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: digi on Wed, 14 August 2013, 11:45:45
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http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-gmail-users-privacy-email-lawsuit (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-gmail-users-privacy-email-lawsuit)
"Google has finally admitted they don't respect privacy," said John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's privacy project director. "People should take them at their word; if you care about your email correspondents' privacy, don't use Gmail."
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Still, I have Gmail, yahoo mail, and hotmail accounts. Gmail is my favorite, Yahoo Mail has been hacked multiple times (and they are going to start charging for it) and Hotmail is god damn useless, not fun.
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Ewww. And I was thinking about switching to gmail as my daily driver. Gmail has everything nowadays. Other emails can't compete.
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Ewww. And I was thinking about switching to gmail as my daily driver. Gmail has everything nowadays. Other emails can't compete.
I'm a strong believer in things that appear as free usually are not (unless it's BunnyLake giveaway's :). So much hosted/cloud garbage now, don't like the direction it's going. Might be considering just buying my own domain mx and hosting my own mail server.
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I'm considering switching over to https://www.fastmail.fm/
I've heard good things about it lately.
I have a lot of services tied to my gmail accounts so it sucks, I really want to get away from google completely.
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I'm considering switching over to https://www.fastmail.fm/
I've heard good things about it lately.
I have a lot of services tied to my gmail accounts so it sucks, I really want to get away from google completely.
Google will probably lose the smart masses, most people are lazy and won't switch. They know they have people locked in because so many things are tied into it. I'm in the same boat as you but will be switching.
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I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
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I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
I don't think any of us do. The point is your personal information is exposed to Google and the government.
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Ewww. And I was thinking about switching to gmail as my daily driver. Gmail has everything nowadays. Other emails can't compete.
I'm a strong believer in things that appear as free usually are not (unless it's BunnyLake giveaway's :). So much hosted/cloud garbage now, don't like the direction it's going. Might be considering just buying my own domain mx and hosting my own mail server.
Very true--"if you're not paying for it, you're probably the product." I've been looking into alternatives for a while... people always use the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" line, but I think that it's crazy to be expected shift to the norm that private and personal conversations don't have an expectation of privacy.
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I have used and loved gmail for many years, but recently they have become much more "evil" to use their own terminology.
My desire is to have a straight clean simple email client without any garbage tied to it.
I love Google Docs for many reasons, but wish that it could be disengaged from my email service unless I specifically asked for them to talk.
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I have used and loved gmail for many years, but recently they have become much more "evil" to use their own terminology.
My desire is to have a straight clean simple email client without any garbage tied to it.
I love Google Docs for many reasons, but wish that it could be disengaged from my email service unless I specifically asked for them to talk.
Irony (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil)
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i've been tempted to setup my own email host for a while now, and use mutt. going to have to give that more thought i think.
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Everyone is lazy. Most people would rather use the easier to use and easier to access programs. At the rate their going I don't think people will stop using Gmail or at least anytime soon.
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I run a server w/ postfix (SMTP), dovecot (IMAP), dspam (anti-spam), clamav (AV), roundcube (webmail), and a number of integration components. My primary access is via Thunderbird, but roundcube does nicely. Sieve server-side filtering keeps my different client views happy rather than relying on client side filtering.
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Data mining is big business. Data is everything. And Google has done a good job of making sure most users will not leave, regardless of what they admit to or state explicitly (instead of through a Terms and Use agreement), simply because users are so embedded into the product(s) and ease of use.
And since no one mentioned it, if you're looking for a new email provider online - check out: http://www.hushmail.com/ (http://www.hushmail.com/)
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Online privacy is a sick joke, Gmail is from my experience the best email client.
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I run a server w/ postfix (SMTP), dovecot (IMAP), dspam (anti-spam), clamav (AV), roundcube (webmail), and a number of integration components. My primary access is via Thunderbird, but roundcube does nicely. Sieve server-side filtering keeps my different client views happy rather than relying on client side filtering.
Nice, and that's all open-source free linux stuff if I'm not mistaken. Might be a fun project here.
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All I'm getting out of this is that google/gmail is the only ones to actually come out and say, no your **** isn't encrypted, if a government agency comes and asks for your stuff, we're going to give them what they ask for.
kudos to them for telling it like it is.
If you seriously think you're going to be "safer" on any other email client just because they haven't said "oh yeah, we share all your data with the government" you deserve to be caught doing whatever illegal **** you're doing.
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If you seriously think you're going to be "safer" on any other email client just because they haven't said "oh yeah, we share all your data with the government" you deserve to be caught doing whatever illegal **** you're doing.
If you setup your own mail server, the mail is still sent in plain text, unless you use mail encryption on everything (which isn't practical in my opinion), however the government would have to intercept your message which is currently illegal without a warrant. I'm not sure what you mean by "you deserve to be caught doing whatever illegal **** you're doing." This has nothing to do with illegal activity, we're talking confidentiality rights for the Red, White and Blue.
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All I'm getting out of this is that google/gmail is the only ones to actually come out and say, no your **** isn't encrypted, if a government agency comes and asks for your stuff, we're going to give them what they ask for.
kudos to them for telling it like it is.
If you seriously think you're going to be "safer" on any other email client just because they haven't said "oh yeah, we share all your data with the government" you deserve to be caught doing whatever illegal **** you're doing.
That's a Bingo... there aren't going to be many free alternatives (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) that are any better, whether they tell you outright what they share or not. Gmail is definitely one of the better services in terms of data liberation and transparency on most accounts. At the end of the day, to me, it's not even an issue of illegal activity, but it's like being back in school and trying to pass a note to someone, and that one annoying nosy person in the class takes it upon themselves to intercept and read your note before it got to the recipient... it's not like you're hiding anything, but it's none of their business what the note says. It's just a choice everyone has to make between convince and the principles of privacy.
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I guess I'm of the opinion that if the govt wants my data badly enough they're going to get it no matter which email service I use. If you think you have privacy anywhere in the world, you're sadly delusional. On the Internet or any open network - anything is fair game. If you want or require privacy then stay off the net...simple as that.
I use Google services and have practically since their inception. I don't have a problem storing my data on their servers. I put things out in the net understanding that they could potentially be accessed by unauthorized people. That is the nature of the medium. It's just a matter of perspective I suppose.
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All I'm getting out of this is that google/gmail is the only ones to actually come out and say, no your **** isn't encrypted, if a government agency comes and asks for your stuff, we're going to give them what they ask for.
kudos to them for telling it like it is.
If you seriously think you're going to be "safer" on any other email client just because they haven't said "oh yeah, we share all your data with the government" you deserve to be caught doing whatever illegal **** you're doing.
That's a Bingo... there aren't going to be many free alternatives (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) that are any better, whether they tell you outright what they share or not. Gmail is definitely one of the better services in terms of data liberation and transparency on most accounts. At the end of the day, to me, it's not even an issue of illegal activity, but it's like being back in school and trying to pass a note to someone, and that one annoying nosy person in the class takes it upon themselves to intercept and read your note before it got to the recipient... it's not like you're hiding anything, but it's none of their business what the note says. It's just a choice everyone has to make between convince and the principles of privacy.
Except that that's not even the same thing. It's not like Gmail is sitting up at night, reading all of your dirty emails, laughing at you and telling all of their friends.
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All I'm getting out of this is that google/gmail is the only ones to actually come out and say, no your **** isn't encrypted, if a government agency comes and asks for your stuff, we're going to give them what they ask for.
kudos to them for telling it like it is.
If you seriously think you're going to be "safer" on any other email client just because they haven't said "oh yeah, we share all your data with the government" you deserve to be caught doing whatever illegal **** you're doing.
That's a Bingo... there aren't going to be many free alternatives (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) that are any better, whether they tell you outright what they share or not. Gmail is definitely one of the better services in terms of data liberation and transparency on most accounts. At the end of the day, to me, it's not even an issue of illegal activity, but it's like being back in school and trying to pass a note to someone, and that one annoying nosy person in the class takes it upon themselves to intercept and read your note before it got to the recipient... it's not like you're hiding anything, but it's none of their business what the note says. It's just a choice everyone has to make between convince and the principles of privacy.
Except that that's not even the same thing. It's not like Gmail is sitting up at night, reading all of your dirty emails, laughing at you and telling all of their friends.
I don't know that I would go that far... there's a big difference between using an algorithm to scan for key words to push targets ads, and actively and personally looking through people's emails (which is where the whole NSA issue enters this debate). As jameslr said, you're really putting your fate into the hands of whoever you host with... you're putting all of your "dirty emails" on their servers, not paying them anything, and then trusting them to be honorable with them. I guess I could revise my analogy to say that it's like giving a note to your friend to deliver to a girl you have a crush on, and trusting that he won't open it and read it. I agree with you that it's sketchy, but they're going to make their money some how, and it's definitely worth looking into private hosting if you're looking to have more control over who can see and work with your messages...though once again, the second you send a message to someone who does not host their own mail, then you're once again putting your information into someone else's hands.
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I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
I don't think any of us do. The point is your personal information is exposed to Google and the government.
The legal/illegal thing is missing the point: what if you are developing a new product (a dish soap, a better mousetrap or an awesome chocolate chip cookie). What if you are a salesman and you want to keep your book of business to yourself? If you are a law-abiding citizen, shouldn't you be able to keep your competitive edge and keep these things secret? Of course you should.
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I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
I don't think any of us do. The point is your personal information is exposed to Google and the government.
The legal/illegal thing is missing the point: what if you are developing a new product (a dish soap, a better mousetrap or an awesome chocolate chip cookie). What if you are a salesman and you want to keep your book of business to yourself? If you are a law-abiding citizen, shouldn't you be able to keep your competitive edge and keep these things secret? Of course you should.
Why would the government want to steal your soap?
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I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
I don't think any of us do. The point is your personal information is exposed to Google and the government.
The legal/illegal thing is missing the point: what if you are developing a new product (a dish soap, a better mousetrap or an awesome chocolate chip cookie). What if you are a salesman and you want to keep your book of business to yourself? If you are a law-abiding citizen, shouldn't you be able to keep your competitive edge and keep these things secret? Of course you should.
Then keep this stuff offline. Store it on a USB stick, whatever. If you're actively trying to protect your data - the first thing you should do is remove access to it from anyone but yourself. There is no reason to put this stuff out on the internet where it can be stolen.
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http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/08/14/no-google-did-not-say-that-we-cant-expect-privacy-in-gmail/
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What are you people hiding... I call bull**** on all the "PRIVACY" you supposidly need...
No one cares that ya'll spank it to off-brand pr0n..
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It's your information you own it. It shouldn't be given away or sold without your permission.
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Gmails been pretty flakey for me since all the updates a few months ago. Important emails not being sent, incoming personal emails not being received. Not sure if they changed the way things go in and out or added some invisible filter, but I've switched over to Hotmail for important things in the interim.
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It's your information you own it. It shouldn't be given away or sold without your permission.
The concept of Ownership has already begun to change.. You can cling to your backwards thinking all you like... It won't stop people from riff'in your info and using it.
Look at the Media companies that try to controll music and movies..
Eventually we will only pay for Internet service. and the Internet service will pay for all creation of mass media.
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Gmails been pretty flakey for me since all the updates a few months ago. Important emails not being sent, incoming personal emails not being received. Not sure if they changed the way things go in and out or added some invisible filter, but I've switched over to Hotmail for important things in the interim.
I can't get used to the "new" gmail smart composer.
I just want my text box back with 5 or 6 fonts... omg.. why.. they gotta go change that....
And seriously STOP ANIMATING things... freaking kids... I don't have time to watch the damn window animation... arrraaaaghghhhh
even if I did have the time, I wouldn't want to watch it...
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tl;dr... gmail shares your data to 'murica government?
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Personally I prefer to just buy a domain and pay (hardly anything these days) for hosting.
Then you can have any features you like and get a more personal email address, when I see companies and professionals using @gmail.com it makes me cringe a little :-X
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Personally I prefer to just buy a domain and pay (hardly anything these days) for hosting.
Then you can have any features you like and get a more personal email address, when I see companies and professionals using @gmail.com it makes me cringe a little :-X
And where will you send these emails?
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What are you people hiding... I call bull**** on all the "PRIVACY" you supposidly need...
No one cares that ya'll spank it to off-brand pr0n..
And when some radical decided your favorite material is illegal and starts a which hunt?
Jews were legal in Germany before WW2.
It wasn't (and still isn't) illegal to be a socialist in this country before McCarthy went on his hunt.
It still isn't illegal to be a Muslim or gay in the U.S., but you might not know it in certain places. How about if you are either and the government knows it and decides to use it against you? I hate coming off as paranoid, conspiracy theorist, but there is plenty of evidence to back this up.
The more someone knows about you, the more they can use that against you, why do you think advertisers pay big money for data. Government isn't the only one you need/want to hide your data from.
It's your information you own it. It shouldn't be given away or sold without your permission.
It is your info and only you can give it away, and you do, by storing it on their systems. It's your data, stored on Google's servers. Google doesn't have ownership, but they have control of it. This is the core of the whole ownership issue
Personally I prefer to just buy a domain and pay (hardly anything these days) for hosting.
Then you can have any features you like and get a more personal email address, when I see companies and professionals using @gmail.com it makes me cringe a little :-X
It's still someone else's server you store it on, therefore you are "giving" it away.
Unfortunately, running your own server actually puts you at higher risk of being hacked, since you know less about security than these companies do. Gmail and Mac mail has been hit before, and Hotmail has been hacked too many times to count
My personal server (running Linux) gets hit with a hack attempt once every 30 seconds and that's after firewalling Africa, Asia and Russia.
The feds can always just slip a box between you and the internet and get everything anyhow.
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Ewww. And I was thinking about switching to gmail as my daily driver. Gmail has everything nowadays. Other emails can't compete.
Where have you been for past X years? In a cave? Anyway, Gmail's web interface doesn't have support for encryption. Never had. Won't have. Ever. Deal breaker.
I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
What are you people hiding... I call bull**** on all the "PRIVACY" you supposidly need...
No one cares that ya'll spank it to off-brand pr0n..
Bull****. (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565)
Also, see Naked Citizen.
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What are you people hiding... I call bull**** on all the "PRIVACY" you supposidly need...
No one cares that ya'll spank it to off-brand pr0n..
And when some radical decided your favorite material is illegal and starts a which hunt?
Jews were legal in Germany before WW2.
It wasn't (and still isn't) illegal to be a socialist in this country before McCarthy went on his hunt.
It still isn't illegal to be a Muslim or gay in the U.S., but you might not know it in certain places. How about if you are either and the government knows it and decides to use it against you? I hate coming off as paranoid, conspiracy theorist, but there is plenty of evidence to back this up.
The more someone knows about you, the more they can use that against you, why do you think advertisers pay big money for data. Government isn't the only one you need/want to hide your data from.
I don't mind advertising companies watching me. I got adblock.
They're always watching somebody, May as well watch me, because I'm pretty awesome.
Racism.. racism is costly and bad for business in developed nations.
Some injustice will always fall through the cracks, This is the price we pay to hold MORE people accountable, which in the end, justifies the means.
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Ewww. And I was thinking about switching to gmail as my daily driver. Gmail has everything nowadays. Other emails can't compete.
Where have you been for past X years? In a cave? Anyway, Gmail's web interface doesn't have support for encryption. Never had. Won't have. Ever. Deal breaker.
I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
What are you people hiding... I call bull**** on all the "PRIVACY" you supposidly need...
No one cares that ya'll spank it to off-brand pr0n..
Bull****. (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565)
Also, see Naked Citizen.
Nothing to hide is problematic for people who seek to use informational advantage "FOR PROFIT"
It is our goal to achieve 99.9% efficiency in terms of resource appropriation.
IN that light, nothing-to-hide is the ONLY way to do so.
The reason you feel ripped off when you buy something is because someone WITH-HELD information from you, thus leading to an inefficient judgement on your part.
Imagine a world where people can't do this... and more so, DO NOT WANT to do this...
THAT is the world I'd like to live in.
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What are you people hiding... I call bull**** on all the "PRIVACY" you supposidly need...
No one cares that ya'll spank it to off-brand pr0n..
And when some radical decided your favorite material is illegal and starts a which hunt?
Jews were legal in Germany before WW2.
It wasn't (and still isn't) illegal to be a socialist in this country before McCarthy went on his hunt.
It still isn't illegal to be a Muslim or gay in the U.S., but you might not know it in certain places. How about if you are either and the government knows it and decides to use it against you? I hate coming off as paranoid, conspiracy theorist, but there is plenty of evidence to back this up.
The more someone knows about you, the more they can use that against you, why do you think advertisers pay big money for data. Government isn't the only one you need/want to hide your data from.
I don't mind advertising companies watching me. I got adblock.
They're always watching somebody, May as well watch me, because I'm pretty awesome.
Racism.. racism is costly and bad for business in developed nations.
Some injustice will always fall through the cracks, This is the price we pay to hold MORE people accountable, which in the end, justifies the means.
Makes one wonder, why the government wants us to be open, when they refuse to act transparently.
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Ewww. And I was thinking about switching to gmail as my daily driver. Gmail has everything nowadays. Other emails can't compete.
Where have you been for past X years? In a cave? Anyway, Gmail's web interface doesn't have support for encryption. Never had. Won't have. Ever. Deal breaker.
I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
What are you people hiding... I call bull**** on all the "PRIVACY" you supposidly need...
No one cares that ya'll spank it to off-brand pr0n..
Bull****. (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565)
Also, see Naked Citizen.
Nothing to hide is problematic for people who seek to use informational advantage "FOR PROFIT"
It is our goal to achieve 99.9% efficiency in terms of resource appropriation.
IN that light, nothing-to-hide is the ONLY way to do so.
The reason you feel ripped off when you buy something is because someone WITH-HELD information from you, thus leading to an inefficient judgement on your part.
Imagine a world where people can't do this... and more so, DO NOT WANT to do this...
THAT is the world I'd like to live in.
Have you even read the essay? Nope. Please, do so before responding. Otherwise, discussion is pointless.
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all you guys talking about hosting your own email... have fun with that. just get a shared hosting account with a local, trustworthy ISP/host and let them handle the mail. That way you don't have to worry about getting blacklisted.
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all you guys talking about hosting your own email... have fun with that. just get a shared hosting account with a local, trustworthy ISP/host and let them handle the mail. That way you don't have to worry about getting blacklisted.
Then you're married to that ISP.
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I think that a lot of people posting in this thread aren't very familiar with how email works on the Internet. Regardless of any local encryption that you may use with your ISP or portal (SSL, etc) and regardless of any TOS that you signed with any of them, your email messages are sent free and clear through as many foreign systems as it takes to reach its destination. You have little to no control over this. At each hop, the message sits on that host's storage medium until it is able to transmit it to the next hop. It is neither encrypted nor protected. For practical reasons, the server wants to get rid of it as soon as it can and deletes it once it does. However, there is no technical reason why it can't keep your message indefinitely. The only way to protect your message is to encrypt it before you send it with PGP or similar. That is a hassle, though. You should never send sensitive information via email. This has always been the case since the very beginning.
I've been hosting my own email for almost 15 years. It's not that difficult. That said, I freely use Gmail and Yahoo addresses as portals to send and receive emails in addition to the ones I host myself. Using Gmail and the others is no different than my message sitting on some foreign server somewhere.
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I was going to suggest the use of an email alias, but it does not work correctly with gmail's current composer...
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I host my own email server, but ultimately the emails are passed across a public network, and through various other servers I have no control over and where I do not even know if a copy of the emails is being stored.
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I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
I don't think any of us do. The point is your personal information is exposed to Google and the government.
The legal/illegal thing is missing the point: what if you are developing a new product (a dish soap, a better mousetrap or an awesome chocolate chip cookie). What if you are a salesman and you want to keep your book of business to yourself? If you are a law-abiding citizen, shouldn't you be able to keep your competitive edge and keep these things secret? Of course you should.
Why would the government want to steal your soap?
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I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
I don't think any of us do. The point is your personal information is exposed to Google and the government.
The legal/illegal thing is missing the point: what if you are developing a new product (a dish soap, a better mousetrap or an awesome chocolate chip cookie). What if you are a salesman and you want to keep your book of business to yourself? If you are a law-abiding citizen, shouldn't you be able to keep your competitive edge and keep these things secret? Of course you should.
Why would the government want to steal your soap?
Probably how they came up with soap on a rope.
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I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
I don't think any of us do. The point is your personal information is exposed to Google and the government.
The legal/illegal thing is missing the point: what if you are developing a new product (a dish soap, a better mousetrap or an awesome chocolate chip cookie). What if you are a salesman and you want to keep your book of business to yourself? If you are a law-abiding citizen, shouldn't you be able to keep your competitive edge and keep these things secret? Of course you should.
Why would the government want to steal your soap?
Probably how they came up with soap on a rope.
Now there's something I haven't seen for a long time! Is soap on a rope still made?
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eh?
(http://mochadad.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/soap-on-a-rope.jpg)
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also brocaps will definitely like this one (and others may want to unsee it):
http://d3f650ayx9w00n.cloudfront.net/700/22717.jpg
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You don't have privacy on the Internet. You never had it. People are just freaking out now because they know for sure they are being spied on. It has been like this for years and years, but people didn't know or weren't sure it was happening.Of course thnderbird is more secure than Gmail, but it isn't secure either.
I'm very pro privacy, since the Internet is the last 'free' place on earth, even though it isn't that free at all. The problem is how uncomfortable it is to be secure on the Internet. Of course all of use could all use Tor, thunderbird and secure all of our data. Some of use do most of these things, but that is still not enough to be really secure.
Now there is this new wave of everyone wanting software and things like that to safely store and sent data on the web. It goes beyond just reconsidering if you want to use Gmail or not. This subject is very difficult since most people say things like 'I don't have anything to hide', which was also said in this thread. These people would never give up comfortably browsing the Internet for some security, since they dont see the bigger picture here, which is that this hurts every person, company and government out there. Things like Prism take away the freedom and independence of everyone on the Internet.
Sorry for the wall of text and thanks for reading.
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Google has always been incredibly transparent about their automated scanning of emails for ad-targeting purposes. I didn't mind it, so I wasn't deterred from signing up. But if you mind that, just don't sign up and don't interact in any way with Google services. They also track what you search to better target ads to you. Have you searched with Google lately?
The key here is that they tell you everything about this up front and don't keep secrets from you. That's wonderful. It allows us all to be informed and make informed decisions about what services to use.
There's a really interesting book about Google and their practices, their Don't be Evil stance, and a bit of history of the company - it's called In The Plex.
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I'm not switching. I don't do anything illegal over e-mail anyways. Or anything illegal. ;)
I don't think any of us do. The point is your personal information is exposed to Google and the government.
The legal/illegal thing is missing the point: what if you are developing a new product (a dish soap, a better mousetrap or an awesome chocolate chip cookie). What if you are a salesman and you want to keep your book of business to yourself? If you are a law-abiding citizen, shouldn't you be able to keep your competitive edge and keep these things secret? Of course you should.
Why would the government want to steal your soap?
Probably how they came up with soap on a rope.
Now there's something I haven't seen for a long time! Is soap on a rope still made?
http://www.soaponarope.com/
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"Google has finally admitted they don't respect privacy," said John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's privacy project director. "People should take them at their word; if you care about your email correspondents' privacy, don't use Gmail."
You should try this: http://www.mailvelope.com/
You encrypt it in the client-side so it won't matter what Google does to the data on their servers.
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Google has always been incredibly transparent about their automated scanning of emails for ad-targeting purposes.
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The key here is that they tell you everything about this up front and don't keep secrets from you. That's wonderful. It allows us all to be informed and make informed decisions about what services to use.
That might have been true at some point, but it isn't any more. US law demands that email providers can essentially be asked to provide access to all of their data by the authorities and are not allowed to be open about it. The Lavabit case and the files about Microsoft provided to the Guardian by Edward Snowden both showed that very clearly.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/13/exclusive_owner_of_snowdens_email_service
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data
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Google has always been incredibly transparent about their automated scanning of emails for ad-targeting purposes.
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The key here is that they tell you everything about this up front and don't keep secrets from you. That's wonderful. It allows us all to be informed and make informed decisions about what services to use.
That might have been true at some point, but it isn't any more. US law demands that providers can essentially be asked to provide access to all of their data by the authorities and are not allowed to be open about it. The Lavabit case and the files about Microsoft provided to the Guardian by Edward Snowden both showed that very clearly.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/13/exclusive_owner_of_snowdens_email_service
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data
Oh. I would never defend the government. I was defending Google because they are frequently accused of being evil. What you've just said, about the US demanding it, is the government's fault - that doesn't make it any less severe, not at all, but it does mean that Google isn't to blame. Actually, it's more severe this way, because the government will not be held accountable for its actions and we all know that. So you make a very good point, but it doesn't counter my point - right? I want to make sure I'm interpreting correctly.
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It's still someone else's server you store it on, therefore you are "giving" it away.
Unfortunately, running your own server actually puts you at higher risk of being hacked, since you know less about security than these companies do. Gmail and Mac mail has been hit before, and Hotmail has been hacked too many times to count
My personal server (running Linux) gets hit with a hack attempt once every 30 seconds and that's after firewalling Africa, Asia and Russia.
The feds can always just slip a box between you and the internet and get everything anyhow.
This is such a good point, and it's important to make a distinction between "privacy" and "security." There is a big difference between Google being able to scan your message for targeted ad placement, and some random person being able to brute force or exploit their way into your personal mail. I had to support a user a little while back that decided to setup a mail server in cahoots with his buddy, and it ended up being hacked and becoming a spam mule. The guy just didn't understand basic security strategies, and thought that he would be magically protected if he hosted his own mail.
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Oh. I would never defend the government. I was defending Google because they are frequently accused of being evil. What you've just said, about the US demanding it, is the government's fault - that doesn't make it any less severe, not at all, but it does mean that Google isn't to blame. Actually, it's more severe this way, because the government will not be held accountable for its actions and we all know that. So you make a very good point, but it doesn't counter my point - right? I want to make sure I'm interpreting correctly.
Well, what you wrote was "they don't keep secrets from you". And that's the point that's not entirely true -- they do keep secrets from you regarding the access they provide for the US authorities, even though they are probabley forced to keep that secret.
For us non-US citizens that is even more severe than it might be for US citizens, because these are not our authorities, and US laws don't protect us against abuse of this data by them at all. It's their duty and purpose to gather as much information about us as they can, so to speak. There is no balancing between rights to privacy and security concern for our data at all. So if Google offered free email or other services to us and told us in their privacy poliy that they're keeping our data private and only scan it anonymously for their own ad services, that's has not been true.
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I see what you mean. It's an interesting discussion point to mention these laws with respect to non-US citizens (it's brought up a lot with this topic, it's nothing new, but still). I've always viewed the internet as the ultimate global network - which of course is what it's supposed to be, so duh. But my point is that when I put something online I accept the fact that it is not contained within the bounds of my nation, but it instead travels to everywhere in the world, and this means that traditional laws and law structures are really not fit for anything online.
So it sucks that non-Americans are being affected by my nation's actions, it really does. But at the same time, when you decided to go online and interact with American companies, there was some inherent risk. And really, the government is targeting American data - just created by non-Americans, but stored in America (voluntarily, by you). This does not justify their actions or put blame on you. The government simply should not be doing what they're doing. But I do think that this description helps put the situation in line with an analogy - what if you got scammed by an American company, as a non-American? The American laws would probably have a huge impact on the outcome, because you did business in America, despite being foreign. In this case the government is screwing you, but it's kind of similar.
Anyway, I feel like I'm not really making a point here, but I'm going to post it anyway. I mostly just get frustrated with people saying "Google is evil". No, Google is not evil. The government is evil and forced Google to do evil things. Too many people blindly trust the government - even after all this spying stuff has come to light.
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Yes, I fully agree about that, that's a risk that people have taken actively. Also, the US are certainly not the only country doing something like this at all.
Google is not more evil than most other large companies in that industry, I agree. I mean, MS changed the whole architecture of the Skype service (which was originally a peer-to-peer encrypted service) to better accomodate wiretapping...
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Anyway, I feel like I'm not really making a point here, but I'm going to post it anyway. I mostly just get frustrated with people saying "Google is evil". No, Google is not evil. The government is evil and forced Google to do evil things. Too many people blindly trust the government - even after all this spying stuff has come to light.
It's not true anymore that Google isn't evil. Their policy on privacy has changed (http://gizmodo.com/5878987/its-official-google-is-evil-now), they've spied on users illegally (http://www.wired.com/business/2012/06/opinion-google-is-evil/), they're acting against net neutrality (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-green/breaking-google-goes-evil_b_676021.html) (see also the recent ban on customer's servers in their network), they tried to actively suppress mapping of contemporary language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungoogleable#Ungoogleable)... not to mention search results censorship and stuff like that.
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When were you ever a customer to Google? The saying "if you're not paying, you're the product" is very true with Google. They don't give a **** about you, you are not their customers, you are the product. Because Google is also a public company, those who own the company can do whatever they want, which is usually make more money.
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