Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/02/14
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]This is true for any e-mail system of any kind unless you use hard-core encryption. There's always SOMEONE who can poke through the e-mail files on the server if they want to badly enough. The real question is: Does Google mine your e-mail for personal data or allow others to do so? If you believe the answer to that question is "yes" then you shouldn't use it nor should you send any mail TO an account on gmail that might in any way be sensitive unless it's thorough encrypted. There are some good encryption products out there Pretty Good Privacy would seem a fine candidate and it's probably legal where you live. I, personally, do not believe that Google is going to sell my name / identity / e-mail address to someone based on mining my e-mail. They DO create ads - on the fly - based on the content of e-mail messages that flow to my computer. I do not mind this so I use gmail for my mailing list traffic. Private traffic, professional traffic, those go through other e-mail systems. Strangely, I find few systems that work as well as gmail and NONE that search the archives as well as gmail. I'm not particularly good at constructing key-word searches (my wife is fantastic but she's a mathematician with a library minor so no surprise THERE) but I can often find stuff in the couple years of LUG archives that gmail now holds. Whether Google was right or wrong to "steal" IP from newspapers by making them 1) easy to find and 2) easy to get to is a different issue. Personally I think the newspapers in question are still waiting to report for certain that the Germans have invaded, falling bombs to the contrary. In a lot of places, some of them directly involved with IP law, they are sort of a laughing stock -- the worst of "old world" ideas. We'll see. I believe that Google is, still, trying to flush away their cache entries for everything related to those newspapers -- a non-trivial evolution given the speed-but-not-storage efficient methodology Google uses. Things could REALLY get ugly if the papers start to demand that the data be removed from backed-up data. Shuddering just to IMAGINE that. I certainly can understand Brian's feelings about Google given his up-close-and-personal experiences with them. "Do no evil" indeed! And his treatment, along with Google's dealings with China, are not shining examples of its corporate culture. But I believe they are tending to behave fairly well. Certainly they do their job well. Like all ascendant entities in the world's pop culture they are coming under attack simply because they are large and successful. I note that Apple now is experiencing this phenomena as well. Adam On 2/14/07, Simon Ogilvie <simon.ogilvie@gmail.com> wrote: > On 14/02/07, Brian Reid <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> wrote: > > > > > gmail is a high quality product that does what it does very well. It may > > well be the best email system out there. > > > > I agree, but if Nathan is correct then anything I send using gmail is > "available" for Google to use as they wish. I suppose that's going to be > true for any web-based email system where the mail is stored on third-party > computer systems. To that end, I'd be happier using the LUG gallery than > Picassa web gallery as at least we know the owner of the computer :-) > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >