Halo

Google spends money to do this, seriously.

     First things first, the privacy issue of Google reading your email is entirely server based, and they do not have a room full of people they’re paying to scan through your every email to decide you’d like some home repair ads as apposed to video game ads. This is a machine that picks up keywords, and sends you contextual advertisements based on what you already talk about; it is not little green men that are going to giggle about your ‘I was sooo drunk last night’ story you just sent to a friend. This system prevents fr33 v1@gra ads and gives you things you may honestly be interested in. It's also what allows such an amazing email capacity, without any pop ups or annoying 'punch the monkey' ads.

“What’s that you said about this already existing? My privacy is already invaded?!?”

     Every ISP already has systems that scan and parse your email, and every major ISP in the US has a Carnivore system set up to check for terrorism related messages. Carnivore is a government system that has been in place for almost 2 years, and when it red flags something it is read by human eyes. Google is doing nothing but being open about a machine scanning for keywords. This method of keyword system is also already in place for spam prevention by many ISP's. All of your incoming email may be scanned and dropped in a spam bin if it sets off a red flag. This is nothing new and everybody seems perfectly fine with this idea.

     What of all this idiotic shock and awe in the press? I’ve just explained this system to you and it really doesn’t seem so bad does it? Well, one misinformed Californian senator describes the service as being a bit like "having a massive billboard in the middle of your home". I have never put my email inbox on the same level as my living room, or even my snail mail inbox. I really hope I’m not alone on this one, because if seeing Viagra and Cheap TOTALLY LEGAL pharmaceutical advertisements all over your coffee table is the norm then I’d hate to see what’s out of bounds.

     My point is very simple. Gmail is offering better ads and a much better service for doing the same thing that is already being done. Not to mention this is a free and completely voluntary service. Anybody you see or hear about protesting this new service is likely completely ignorant of the issue, and is the equivalent of an army of Ace Ventura style talking assholes. Pay them no attention, and if you yourself have some privacy concern with this service… simply don’t use it. The crime against your privacy stops there. If you see somebody with a Gmail address sending you something you wish to reply to, be careful with your words. This is nothing serious compared to spyware programs that install themselves on your computer without your knowledge. If there is a legal battle to be fought, it’s with those borderline virus executables, not a voluntary service that is being completely up front with how it’s run.

    I close with two last bits of knowledge. The first is the interesting note that aside from government officials and privacy groups, the two biggest nay sayers of Gmail seem to be Microsoft and Yahoo. That's pretty funny that the two biggest bad mouths just happen to be in direct competition don't you think? The last is this quote from Gmail's very own terms of service: Ads and links to related pages only appear alongside the message that they are targeted to, and are only shown when the Gmail user, whether sender or recipient, is viewing that particular message. No email content or other personally identifiable information is ever shared with advertisers. In fact, advertisers do not even know how often their ads are shown in Gmail, as this data is aggregated across thousands of sites in the Google Network.

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