[ale] [OT] totally creepy phone action

[Dustin Strickland]

Ugh... That gave me the shivers. I stopped trusting the Capital G a
while back, and every day I hear at least one thing that legitimizes
my paranoia. Maybe you have some other app on your phone that's reading
through your locally stored mail(possibly even your mail client)?
That's still kind of a stretch, but Google does have a large supply of
bored developers...

In any event, really creepy. ASAP I'm breaking up with Google for good.
Just have to start running my own mail servers and I'll be alright(in
theory, anyway...)

If you haven't heard of the Neo 900, now might be a good time to look
into it: http://neo900.org/

On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 22:03:42 -0400
Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

> I taught an intro self defense class today and a student asked for a
> PDF of the handout. I was ready for this and pulled out my android
> phone to email a copy of the PDF I had stashed earlier on the phone.
> I was using my gmail account account to send to an emory.edu account.
> I have never met this person before and have had no prior
> communications with them. I do not get my emory email using gmail but
> I do use the google/android supplied exchange client to get my work
> email so the communication is SUPPOSED to be encrypted between server
> and phone. This person's name was on an email I got on my Emory
> account as having paid but not their email address. Their address was
> first.last at emory.edu
> 
> I started typing in the student's Emory email address and gmail
> auto-completed for me.
> 
> Correctly.
> 
> This happened TWICE with two different Emory students in the same
> class.
> 
> My GPS was probably on and the class was posted on the recreation
> site. Has Google become so adept at deducing what's going on that
> they can predict who will attend a seminar class and correlate with a
> GPS location to correctly guess TWICE on a non-gmail email
> address?!?!?
> 
> Totally creepy and I'm thinking about tossing my phone in front of a
> steam roller.