Google Lawsuit For Reading Emails

helix2301

In Runtime
Messages
280
Location
Datacenter
There is no denying the power of the Google AdSense Advertising network. Interest-Based Advertising, often known by its more modest name, “behavior targeting,” gives advertisers a way to deliver ads to users who have shown interest in related items.

Google tracks your online movements threw almost everything

Droid
Mobile Apps
Chrome
YouTube
Google Docs
Pretty much anything Google creates collects tracking data and builds a collection of “interests” based on which websites you visit. For business owners, bloggers, internet marketers, and other online business analytical data is vital to daily operations and useful in SEO ranking.

Google does create an advertising program based on your Gmail account. But a new lawsuit targets Google for reading e-mails to target ads. But the issue isn't that Google is reading e-mails from registered users; rather, the company is using e-mails sent from other services to Google users to target ads as well.

Google does not hide the fact they use email content to serve context-based ads to its Gmail users. Gmail users agree in the terms of service which explicitly states that users' e-mail content determines what ads they see.

The lawsuit is on behalf of “all persons in the province of British Columbia who have sent email to a Gmail account” and demands statutory damages for breach of copyright of $500 per e-mail that Google has used for ads. The lawsuit also seeks an injunction against Google's use of e-mails going forward.

Being a non-Gmail user, you never agreed to the terms of service, so the legality of what Google is doing seems murky. I am not sure how this will stand in court. In this case if you know Gmail is doing this do not send to Gmail accounts. The other issue is Google hosts services for business, government and state entities. So are there terms of service different? This is something we will watch closely to see how it unfolds.
 
Re: GOOGLE LAWSUIT FOR READING EMAILS

Well this is just great! If you can't trust your search engine, who can you trust!? Because of this we're gonna have to start brutally interrogating every single person we know for suspicion of producing malware, adware, and spyware into our PC's. Waterboarding is an almost guaranteed solution. We can no longer trust anyone... In fact, you shouldn't trust yourself. Go outside and hang yourself from a tree by your feet and stay there for four hours until you're 100% sure you aren't guilty.

That was a fun slippery slope!
*puts away sled*

Anyway, I'm not too surprised Google does this crap. It's really annoying, and it generates profit for them. I'm not comfortable with them reading my emails, but I NEVER use gmail as my primary e-mail. I just use it to access youtube, and even then I could care less about what they view on there. I mostly just troll the place anyway. :p So as far as I'm concerned they can just take my advice.

This is why I use yahoo email. Not really sure if it's not guilty of the same thing, but this thread makes me feel better about it none the less.
 
Back
Top Bottom