[ale] What's so special about gmail invites?

[Robert Reese]

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On 9/1/2004 at 1:45 PM Jason Day wrote:

>On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 01:56:45AM -0400, Robert Reese wrote:
>> I
>> *will* not have have Google or anyone else peruse through any email I
>send
>> to a gmail user, and certainly am not interested in having Google sniff
>any
>> email sent to me from a gmail account.  ;c)
>
>As opposed to the various virus scanners and spam filters that sniff any
>email you send?

None of them scan them for the purpose of analyzing content for the purpose
of individualized statistics.  Neither of them accrue usage data on a
per-user basis.


>  Or the unscrupulous sysadmin at any of the servers your
>email happens to pass through, who reads random email messages for the
>fun of it?

First, I've never sent anything plain-text that would embarrass me. 
Second, I'll encrypt it if I don't care for spying sysops.  Third, a wild
sysop doesn't have the capabilities to catalog and analyze all of my
messages.  In other words, apples and torque wrenches.


>  Unless you use encryption, there is nothing secure or
>private about email, no matter which provider you use.

You are 100% correct with that statement.


>>In addition, there is a technical limitation to your gmail filter: there 
>is nothing that prevents any of your email recipients from forwarding
>their email to a gmail account.  The *only* way to keep Google, or
>anybody, from sniffing your email is to use encryption.

The same technical limitation exists for your exception: a recipient can
decrypt and forward, still.  However, that is a third-party transaction,
not a first-person transaction.  With a GMail account, then 100% of
unencrypted messages get scanned and analyzed.

By the way, you might find a couple of links from another related post
interesting:

http://www.epic.org/privacy/gmail/faq.html
http://gmail-is-too-creepy.com/

Thanks to Christopher Russell for the links. ;c)


Cheers,
Robert Reese~

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