April 15, 2004
Gmail and privacy
When the news of Google’s new Gmail service broke the evening of March 31st, I pasted a link to the press release in a IRC channel I frequent. I got a bit of grief for pasting a link to what was so obviously an April Fools’ joke. Well, by midday on April 2nd it was becoming apparent that this wasn’t a joke at all. Business people gave kudos to the company for taking the battle to Yahoo and Microsoft instead of waiting for their core search technology to be challenged, while just about everyone else focused on serious privacy concerns raised by the service. The debate has touched off a number of interesting news stories and blog entries regarding Gmail as well as other emerging technologies at Google. Topix.net provides some interesting background information and opinion, while Kottke weighs in about the future possibilities of a GooOS. More recently, InfoWorld reports that the significant outcry may have caused Google to rethink its approach while (as always) EFF stays on the case with follow-up reports here and here.
Personally, I’m not just worried about the people that become Gmail users, I’m worried about sending those people email. One can certainly opt-out of the worst possibilities, the associating of search history (via cookies) with the contents of messages in your Gmail account, simply don’t sign up for the Gmail service. But what about sending email to people with Gmail accounts, knowing that your email is going to be scanned by Google’s computers and possibly stored for years on Google’s servers? “Well, I will refuse to send email to anyone with an @gmail.com address!” you say. The only problem being that whatever address you are sending to could easily be forwarding to a gmail account. Given the very real probability of 10 million+ people eventually using Gmail… these privacy issues should be of concern to future Gmail users and the general email using public alike.