Gmail is messenger or secretary? - Computer Point

Into Google, accused of intercept for advertising and spam the correspondence of its users and of those who communicate with them, he defends pointing out that his is a role as secretary. How’s that for almost all e-mail services

Rome – Users could not reasonably expect that using Gmail messages exchanged remain private, as they can not expect that a secretary does not open the mail and relay traditional trust to third parties for a communication service necessarily mean yield on secrecy.

This is the core of a document filed by Google in a California court to defend a class action by its own email service, targeted for the practice of intercepting incoming communications and subjecting them to analysis to avoid the spam and delivering contextual advertising.

Google Motion 061313 by Andrew Blake

There are those who, in the course the document in a contingency in which public opinion is particularly sensitive and indignant than the intrusion of state and market in electronic communications, has cried foul. Specifically, the association for the protection of consumers Consumer Watchdog : “At Google have finally admitted that they respect the privacy – ruled John M. Simpson, head of the division of the association that deals with the protection of privacy – people should take them in word: if you hold the privacy of your e-mail correspondence, do not use Gmail. “It is true that Google has never denied to work on matching buzzing in the boxes of its users: there are conditions of use to remember, there are frequent quarrels with the competition, forcing Mountain View to summarize the operation of its system analysis, fully automatic, without the intervention of human eye.

But since these demonstrations of transparency does not seem to ever be enough, in the document filed in court, and only partially developed by Consumer Watchdog , Google tries to explain its position with an analogy: “as the sender of a letter addressed to a colleague should not be surprised if the Secretary of the recipient opens the letter, the people who use email web- based today can not be surprised if their communications are processed by the email service provider of the recipient upon delivery. “

Consumer Watchdog instead observes reality in a different light:” Sending an email is like giving a letter at the post office – the comparison track Simspon – I expect that the post office delivers the letter on the basis of the address is written on the envelope. I do not expect that those who deliver the mail to open the my letter and read it. “

Gaia Bottà