~ryanlowe/blog: Technically Elite Good Intention of the Month: Gmail Privacy Outcry

Technically Elite Good Intention of the Month: Gmail Privacy Outcry

I find it a little funny that there is all of this hubbub about Gmail and privacy concerns. Nevermind the fact that no one is holding a gun to your head to take a free email account anyway, though some would argue that's not the point. I think it is -- as long as Google says explicitly and not in fine print in a long contract "we'll be targetting ads based on the content of your email messages" and the user agrees to it, what's the problem?

Some of the technically elite feel the need to raise alarm bells to protect the technically ignorant. Frankly it's starting to sound like disinfectant commercials getting people all worried about germs our bodies are designed to handle naturally. But I digress...

Email isn't secure, there's the bombshell of the month. Neither is talking on the telephone or sending a postcard. All of these communications media can be and probably are being monitored by government agencies. Call me paranoid if you want to but that's exactly how Mohammed Momin Khawaja from Orleans, Ontario was implicated in the plot to set off a bomb in London, England. He was subsequently arrested by Canadian police, at the same time as nine of his accused co-conspirators.

When you send an email over the Internet it's routed by mail servers called mail transfer agents (MTAs) until it reaches the destination inbox. During that travel the email is reassembled at each MTA so the email header can be read and the email routed to the next MTA. The reassembled email is in plain text and readable to any person operating the MTA machine. In the case of Khawaja, the reassembled email resided on a server in the United States and could be read quite easily (though the article talks about a court order) by monitoring software, probably looking for suspicious keywords: bomb London Afganistan.

It wouldn't surprise me if most people didn't know email was so insecure. But when you think about it, who cares? Does anyone really want to read the letters I send to my mother? No, of course not. But if you had a government controlled MTA out there, you could monitor all of the emails routed by it and flag interesting ones based on keywords to catch terrorists. Since 9/11, you can bet there has been more pressure on the intelligence community (CIA, NSA) to monitor communications. That's where people should be worried about their privacy!

Do people care if Gmail's algorithms read their mail and target ads to them? Probably not, they are just happy to get a gigabyte of free email storage. Leave the poor folks alone and find a more worthy privacy crusade ... there are plenty of them out there.

Posted at April 08, 2004 at 12:43 AM EST
Last updated April 08, 2004 at 12:43 AM EST

Comments

I don't actually see what all fuss is about either. If people are willing to sign up to for a free email service that reads their emails, then that's up to the choice of the individual.

It's not like actual human beings will be reading the email anyway. Probably just a text search to match words from the user's email to matching adverts. I think people are assuming that actually Google employee's will be reading the emails.

On that note have people actually stopped to think who is viewing their personal details at the various companies that provide you with day to day services? Everyday your details are accessed by companies that provide services such as electricity, gas, phones, tv. I would be more concerned about these details being secure than some emails from friends and family, especially with the current boom of outsourcing!

If people are being offered a free 1Gb email service, there will be thousands that will initially sign up and they will start using their inbox as they would a normal service. Imagine the number of emails needing to be scanned! If you have nothing to hide then what's the big deal?!

» Posted by: Matthew Lang at April 8, 2004 04:02 AM

I'm with you guys, however, be careful of this statement:

"If you have nothing to hide then what's the big deal?!"

All the privacy advocates will be on you like a fat kit on M&Ms. They will then quote Ben Franklin - "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

and the story will go on and on ...

That fact is, this is not new. However, I am not trusting of corporations "accidentally" leaking information after hording it for so many years. Say a war breaks out and the government demands that all corporations with communication information hand it over in order to help defend their country. Then the government gets it, and lo and behold, you're being brought in because you have happen to fit a parameter in their data mining algorithm.

The dangers are there, and I simply don't trust the word of Corporations. They are run by people. And people will lie. It's in our nature.

Mind if you I was sending an important email, I would send it encrypted.

I posted the above comment on my blog as well.

» Posted by: roy at April 8, 2004 09:43 AM

let me start by saying I think the whole issues is dumb because people are opting IN to this service, so really they should be aware of the ULA, which includes ads targeted at them.

Devil's advocate Question for you:

What if all the spam you received was catered to the content of your inbox, would that be acceptable?

I think the problem here is that the average consumer perceives advertising as non-email spam, stuff they don't want, but they get none the less.

If I started receiving spam that was in regards to travel in peru or working in St Louis, I would be a little freaked out, and I know what I'm doing. Imagine people who have never had anything but a Hotmail account, logging in and seeing 'Condos in Ottawa?' advertising, they are going to be very confused and may even stop using the service.

I understand Google Ads are everywhere, but I don't think they should be in your email... mainly cause I don't think ANY ads should be in your email!

See you this weekend, I'm home Friday afternoon.

» Posted by: Travis at April 8, 2004 10:15 AM

Yep, as long as people agree (individually) that it's OK for Google to place ads based on content of emails, and they opt in, then I have no problem with it. I like that Google isn't hiding the fact that this is how they plan to make money -- if it pays for more storage then it's understandable.

I plan to take a Google account and ignore the ads. I don't know if I'd say that the ads are like spam though ... ignoring ads is a lot easier than dealing with and deleting spam emails.

» Posted by: Ryan at April 8, 2004 10:37 AM

Roy, you're right. Sensitive email should be encrypted. It's strange that encryption tools have not become more common for email, though I suspect that people just don't care (businesses should though).

Governments also have an interest in keeping email unencrypted because then it will be much easier to monitor. They could still crack email encryption with enough computing horsepower, but it likely wouldn't be worth the effort.

» Posted by: Ryan at April 8, 2004 10:43 AM