Post by Blackbird on Jul 24, 2005 15:36:47 GMT -1
A friend has pointed out the horrors of G-mail and the frightening policies of Google towards personal information.
Scary stuff from this site: www.google-watch.org/gmail.html
"For the first time in Google's history, the language in their new policy makes it clear that they will be pooling all the information they collect on you from all of their various services. Moreover, they may keep this information indefinitely, and give this information to whomever they wish... After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record. This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that's needed to force Google to produce a copy."
Even when messages are deleted from your G-mail account, Google still retains the information from that mail. This basically gives them access to your personal communications and the right to sell them to whomever they choose. Even on a closed e-mail list, it only takes one member to be using G-mail for all messages to be available to their database.
For a decent web search, try www.scroogle.org/ This scours Google's database, but does not leave cookies in your machine, nor does it retain information from your searches.
Please consider this information carefully before using Google or G-mail.
Scary stuff from this site: www.google-watch.org/gmail.html
"For the first time in Google's history, the language in their new policy makes it clear that they will be pooling all the information they collect on you from all of their various services. Moreover, they may keep this information indefinitely, and give this information to whomever they wish... After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record. This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that's needed to force Google to produce a copy."
Even when messages are deleted from your G-mail account, Google still retains the information from that mail. This basically gives them access to your personal communications and the right to sell them to whomever they choose. Even on a closed e-mail list, it only takes one member to be using G-mail for all messages to be available to their database.
For a decent web search, try www.scroogle.org/ This scours Google's database, but does not leave cookies in your machine, nor does it retain information from your searches.
Please consider this information carefully before using Google or G-mail.