Women in Technology

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Weblog:		The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus
Subject:		If it is successful. could you avoid replying to Gmail users?
Date:		2004-04-17 14:57:31
From:		nzheretic
Response to: Browser-side Javascript public key encyption
At work around 20% of legitmate non-spam emails , mostly inquiries, are from Hotmail or other webmail services. If Gmail is going to as successful as Hotmail, it's going to become more difficult to avoid replying to legitmate emails from it's users. Google could also use a number of mechanisims to get email recipiants to connect to the Gmail service though the browser, including keeping email attachments server side inserting an URI in the email. Hotmail, or any other web email provides could do the same, even using the spammer trick of webbug images emmbedded in the HTML'ed email. Significant profilable information can be gathered from the email headers alone. There is a potential network effect on the erosion of privacy, made more prominent with users moving to a few very large service providers. Privacy advocates have a legitmate concern over the issues surrounding the profiling and privacy of email. While Google remains under its current management, I am personally less concerned. However just as in January 1998 Hotmail was purchased by another company, Microsoft, Google could be sold to another company with even less moral scruples.

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If it is successful. could you avoid replying to Gmail users?
2004-11-14 15:36:38 Arosee [View]

And, as Tim's article makes clear, the NSA already "owns" it all (when they choose to), and Google's wonderful technology hands them quite a powerful tool. If, perchance, the government chooses to abuse it, we will be quite at their mercy. (And no, I'm not a leftist. Far as I'm concerned, they own the government already - even the Great Communicator could not root them all out - and all their whining about sinister right-wingers is a self-serving smoke screen ;-).

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