A question

[emmagrant01]

What's the big deal about GMail? I keep seeing people on my f-list asking for and offering invites, and I have no idea why. When I first heard about the premise, and that Google would "read" the content of emails you send and receive to target advertising to you, etc., I thought, WTF? Why would anyone want to do that?

Clearly people did want to do it, since it quickly became the "it" new email address to have. I'm still skeptical, myself. I'll offer some interesting links, though. Some of these express views that are a bit paranoid, but are still intriguing:

GMail is too creepy

"If Google builds a database of keywords associated with email addresses, the potential for abuse is staggering. Google could grow a database that spits out the email addresses of those who used those keywords. How about words such as "box cutters" in the same email as "airline schedules"? Can you think of anyone who might be interested in obtaining a list of email addresses for that particular combination? Or how about "mp3" with "download"? Since the RIAA has sent subpoenas to Internet service providers and universities in an effort to identify copyright abusers, why should we expect Gmail to be off-limits?"

Things Google knows about you

"If you use a GMail account:
• Who you send emails to
• Who sends emails to you
• The contents of those emails
• The contents of all emails received from any mailing lists of which you are a member, even if they are private mailing lists."


Privacy subtleties of GMail

"Even so, people have a reaction to a 3rd party computer doing scans like this. If you were offered a service that saved you money by having your paper mail opened by robots for scanning, which then inserted new junk mail in your box based on what it found, you might get a bit creeped out. Go further and consider a service that gave you free phone calls if it could have speech-recognizing computers listen in and barge in with product offers related to your conversation? It's easy to imagine an unpleasant situation where you get invited to a gay wedding in Vancouver, and find with it in your mailbox brochures for gifts, Vancouver hotels and a free copy of Out magazine. People have extended that fear into the e-mail realm."

Comments

[hazelhawthorne.livejournal.com]

I love the paranoid excerpts (just because I'm paraniod, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me). *grin*

I actually have a gmail account now - a friend had an invite, I was curious, voila!
What am I going to do with it?
I don't know. I'm pretty happy with my yahoo account right now, so I don't plan on scraping it or switching my lj notification over to gmail. So far I am just using it to store stuff I'm working on at home that I want accessable at work and vice versa.
I'm not really paranoid about who might care what I write or recieve, the only laws that are being broken are moral codes I don't subscribe to (hello, ACLU, I'm being persecuted for my religious beliefs and/or sexual practices) and that hazy area of copyright infringement.
I will say the same thing I have always said when the subject of wire tapping or other survailience has come up throughout my life: If they want to watch/listen in on/read about my life, let them, at least they'll get a good laugh and an occasional thrill out of it. I hear most survailience jobs are terminally boring. It's like the security gaurds at Disneyland who fight over who gets to watch the cameras from the PotC ride, because every so often, you get to watch the triad who waited three hours to get a private boat not me, friends, and I had other friends who worked for the mouse at the time. the tape was bootlegged and passed around parties for months afterward

Sorry for the rambling, I am way too tired and way too happy to be at work this morning. le sigh *grins* *hugsemma&thewholeworld*

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Did you know there's a super-secret speakeasy in Disneyland? I've met people who've been to it. That image of the POC ride just kills me! "Yo ho yo ho..."

[jedi-diplomat.livejournal.com]

I believe and I could be wrong, but it's the space. Google's offering 1G of space for free. Most people who don't have a POP3 account like the space feature. I don't have a gmail account, but I didn't know about the scanning feature. Frankly, I have enough people scanning/reading my email as it is that I don't need anymore.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I have enough email accounts right now. I really don't need another! It's just be one more thing to deal with!

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

I brought all this up at the time it started, too, even though I do have a gmail. Apparently it's not too different from other free webmail services in the ToS, so you're not any less safe than if you use, say, Yahoo or Hotmail as your primary email. (I don't; I have earthlink and a couple of addresses attached to my own domain. The ToS is different if you actually pay for the service.)

So I wouldn't use gmail for anything incriminating. ;) It's really a good interface for mailing lists, though.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I love that icon.

I actually don't know if GMail is any more or less safe than anything else, but the idea of targeted marketing creeps me out a bit!

[helens78]

Better stop using Amazon, then. ;) All those "you might like" or "other people who bought this bought that" things are the same basic process -- data mining and targeted offers based on the information you give it, all connected to your username and order history. Data mining is a fantastic tool, you just have to choose the situations where you allow it to happen carefully. Or you have to make your decisions about where and when it's worth letting people mine data. Which, obviously, you've done here -- but targeted advertising is so much the wave of the future it's not even funny. Of course, the fact that people think it's "creepy" will probably make them create laws that say companies can't store data on consumers, which IMO is stupid -- like you and Sithdragn, people can choose not to use that service. It's like someone in this thread said -- the government's use is what really creeps me out. I'd love laws that say the government itself is forbidden from storing any data on its citizens, personally. *grin* Because while you can opt out of having a Gmail account or you can avoid using online vending services that store information on you, you can't tell the government "I'm sorry, but no, I do not want you looking at the books I've borrowed from the library this past year." If they want to pass a law that says they can do that, boom. Tough luck.

...*shakes head* I'm not quite sure how this got turned into a rant about the government. I think it's election season or something. *oy* *goes to sit down somewhere quiet*

[krissielee.livejournal.com]

All they'd get from me is smut anyway. That's where I send my stories to my betas, so I'd like to see their reactions to that.

And my penpals. But mostly those conversations revolve around philosophical ideals or slash morals.

Oh, and also midi files go out to my friends with midinotate so they can have sheet music.

So in any case, I'd like to see what they think of what I send through their systems.

But I am reading through the articles, just because.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I guess I already have more email accounts than I need!

[krissielee.livejournal.com]

I've got tons too. I'm an email whore. ^_^

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

I really think it's a tempest in a teapot, and this is from someone who's primary legal interests are privacy and copyright.

Firstly, the third analogy is totally incorrect, Gmail has been by FAR the most Spam-free e-mail I've ever used.

As far as collecting information on the keywords used, I'm far more worried about carnivore, the government's technology to do just that on the entire bloody web, which has been out for yearsand can be used without judicial oversight than I am of the really asinine ads that I get through gmail. They're utterly robotic... they keep offering me Kung Fu movies as related to slash fanfic. Plus, there is NO indication that google is storing that information specifically on gmail customers.

They DO store information on every web-search that is done already for page-ranking purposes, and can track that to your computer IF you allow them to save a cookie. Any e-mail provider is going to know the contents of your messages, and who you send and recieve e-mail from... think about it; the mail is *on their server*. Gmail doesn't really look at it any more than anyone else does, they just use the information differently.

More importantly, I didn't have to enter *ANY* personal information when I signed up for my gmail account... just my desired e-mail address and my name, which was optional. Yahoo required my city, state, zip, real name, and optionally address and phone number as well as age, occupation, and other data so that they could send ads to me. I feel a whole heck of a lot safer with a gmail robot reading the contents of my messages than I do with a person at yahoo knowing my biographical data. My humble opinion, of course.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I saw something on CNN today about how records of Scott Peterson's web searches were entered as evidence in his trial. Whoa... That'll make me think twice before searching on "pretty boys kissing, pictures" again. :-P

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I live in Madison, and when the whole Audrey Siler thing was going on the police were talking about how they could go through her computer and see all the webpages that she'd visited and the AIM conversations she'd had and e-mails she'd sent and I was like... My god, If I ever comit a crime, I'm burning my computer first.

[twenty-seconds.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, gmail-is-creepy is run by a man who allegedly has a personal vendetta against Google and its owners. Not that his concerns aren't valid, though they shouldn't only apply to Google.

To be honest, what I find more disconcerting is not that Gmail saves e-mail info, but that companies like the RIAA really would like to get at it. If there were no one around who wanted access to our personal information/communication, then maybe we wouldn't be so paranoid about it.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I think that's the big point -- that lots of people collect info on you, and that unless you refuse to accept cookies, someone, somewhere could get their hands on it, no matter what email service you use.

[lunicanca.livejournal.com]

I've a gmail account. I'm aware of must of this, I think -- how Google stores the emails, et cetera. Mostly what I do is use both Yahoo and Gmail for different things. Gmail I use for lj notices and various fandom things and for signing up to various websites. I also use it if I'm emailing a friend. I use yahoo for Yahoo groups, mostly, and for emails to family. I won't email my mom on my gmail account, for instance. Partially to protect her emails, perhaps; also so that she doesn't know I have a gmail account (as she'd probably raise these same concerns and make me delete it. >.< She's, um, extreme sometimes like that). I also use it if I want to store things. Gmail has labels, but Yahoo has folders, and I like that.

I also don't put much stock in my rights and privacy online. I don't go insanely out of my way to protect myself, really, but I also don't think much stuff online is safe. So, I'm not sure exactly how much can be done anyway. *shrugs*

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

It seems that quite a few folks like the flexibility and some of the specific features of GMail. I don't know that I even need some of those things!

[nattybear.livejournal.com]

I have a gmail account, someone invited me, but I don't use it. I don't see why, everyone has a working email address already. Maybe if you're sending huge files it's good, but other than that, I think they're trying a little too hard.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Some people have made comments about the sorts of features GMail has that they like. I'mnot sure it's something I particularly need, though.

[nattybear.livejournal.com]

Yeah I know, I'm perfectly happy with my yahoo email. *shrug*

[kazumi.livejournal.com]

Dude, the thing is, other free email providers such as Hotmail could be doing all these same things, so I'm not particularly bothered.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Yeah, probably. But the targeted advertising thing is a bit weird.

[norah.livejournal.com]

The reason all the people I know use it is that it's brilliant for RPG tagging - the way it "threads" conversations makes it really easy to compile tags into finihsed scenes. I have seven invites, if you want one.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Other folks have told me that too, about the threading capability. I'm trying to imagine how something like that would be useful to me! :-P

[liesbyomission.livejournal.com]

FYI... The pop3 email client Thunderbird also allows for threading of email conversations. I don't do much of that, so I don't have it enabled, but my dad does.

http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

Also, thunderbird has brilliant junk mail filters. Just FYI.

Myself, I use pop3 email from my own domain so as to avoid important info being stored on servers like yahoo and hotmail.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

i searched and found the same links. have no problem being accused of paranoia and lectured about all mail providers doing the same - i don't use my gmail account because i have no use for it, at the moment.

the only very, very good thing about gmail is that first yahoo and now even hotmail upgraded accounts to 1 gb, that is wonderful, thanks so much google!

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Heh. That is a good thing!

[green-key.livejournal.com]

I recently received an invite. I've thought of using the account for storage, but still I'm hesitant. They're not luring people in with 1G accounts just cuz they're nice folks. Mark my words, in some months or a year, they will enact some form of spam or spy nastiness. Nothing is free. /cynicism

Such is why I'm more than happy to pay a nominal $25 fee per year for my own domain. I wouldn't touch yahoo, hotmail or gmail if I were paid to use it. Seriously.

[helens78]

TANSTAAFL, of course. What Gmail does to pay for itself is it puts text ads on a sidebar -- text ads, not flashy icky banner ads -- much like you see on sites that have sold advertising to Google. And the reason Gmail is "spidered" is so that those text ads are "relevant" to your conversations.

Which seems really spooky when you hear about it ("OMG COMPUTERZ R READING MY EMAIL") but when you see it in practice, it's patently obvious that no human eyes have seen what you're writing. Totally not spooky, or at least not any more spooky than any other kind of non-encrypted email; any hacker with a packet sniffer can get his hands on your email with a little bit of work if you're not using a firewall, for example.

[green-key.livejournal.com]

TANSTAAFL

Yeah. I'll... take your word for whatever that is.

Everyone has their preferences. Mine is for ad-free, spider-free, hassle-free e-mail, period. For the $25 fee I pay, I gain a 100MB web domain with plenty of bandwidth, my own use group, plus an unlimited number of 10MB mailboxes. In other words, no spidering, no ads of any kind whatsover in my webspace or e-mail, and all the e-mail space I could ever want. Hardly required a moment's decision from me. :)

any hacker with a packet sniffer can get his hands on your email with a little bit of work if you're not using a firewall, for example.

That would be an apples and oranges comparison. A firewall is a user's personal choice and responsibility, making spidering and hacking avoidable (or moreso). Gmail does not offer the user that choice, as you said, that's how they pay for their service.

If I were an RPer, I might be tempted to check it out if only for RP purposes, but alas, I stick with LARPing. :)

[helens78]

TANSTAAFL == "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." It's a classic economics term for those of us who are econ geeks ;)

Gmail does not offer the user that choice, as you said, that's how they pay for their service.

Ah, but you have the choice not to use Gmail. After all, you're electing that choice yourself. ;)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

You know, I have a handful of email accounts, and I pay for all of them. I don't have to deal with ads at all in the set-up I currently use. Maybe if people use Yahoo or something else riddled with random ads, GMail *would* be better.

[helens78]

Gmail is the coolest thing ever. Seriously. It's got a hell of a lot of storage space (I've used up 20MB just in text since I started using it a few months back), it's readable anywhere (though they are still working on an HTML-only version -- which I desperately want so I can use it on my PDA), you don't even have to worry about sorting your mail into folders (you can use the same Google search engine as, well, Google, to find the messages you're looking for -- SO MUCH FASTER than any local email program's search feature) and oh God, the conversation threading.

As makesmewannadie said, it makes cowriting unbelievably, insanely easy. Your entire fic-in-progress is saved as one "conversation", and when you get the newest message from your cowriter, it pops the whole conversation back into your inbox, so you can click one button and see everything that's happened in that fic to that point. Amazing stuff -- the people I write with and I have been using Gmail almost exclusively since we all started using it.

TANSTAAFL, of course. Gmail puts "relevant text ads" on your sidebar. They are non-annoying and non-invasive; they are, in fact, the least annoying advertising on the Internet I have ever seen. Also, unlike other free webmails, Gmail doesn't add a footer to the bottom of your email that serves as advertising for itself. Doesn't need to; the text ads bring in all the revenue it needs.

And the text ads are hilarious if you're writing porn. You have no idea. I've clicked on dozens of ads (which is why the text ads work; people are more likely to click on them if they're "relevant" to what they're talking about, which sometimes they are, and sometimes they're not), and I'm totally OK with computers spidering them. It's not any less secure than any other method of email transmission, unless you use encryption of some kind.

You'd think being married to someone who works in computer security would make me more leery of this sort of thing, but really, I'm not. I'm not willing to do what would be required to genuinely secure all my information and email online (believe me, it is more work than anyone wants to do), and I'm not going to stress about computers reading my porn (I put it online in public so people can read it, for heaven's sake).

One more thing it's useful for: a lot of military people are using it. 1000MB means a lot when you're storing pictures of the kids you haven't seen in six months and you don't want to have to choose which ones you're giving away. I've sent out a few invites to military personnel.

Really, I could go on and on about it. And I've been using it for several months now, and no spammers have glommed it yet, or if they have, Gmail's tackled them and made them cry uncle for me. *beams*

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that part of the reason I haven't been interested in GMail was because it seemed so trendy when it first started. I saw an article in a magazine about it, and someone from the Google marketing dept was saying how they intentionally capitalized on the social structure of web communities in getting people to try it out. They copied the "invite-only" policy made popular by organizations like LJ on purpose, just to create a market for the product. If the only way you can get an account is to be *invited* by someone who already has one, it makes it something people want more, or so goes the philosophy.

So that combined with the ad thing (and I've always paid for email, so I don't have much experience dealing with ad-supported email) made me not so interested. I can see how it would be good for the things you describe, but I don't write that way. I have plenty of space in my email accounts, and so on. I'm happy with AOL, actually. It does a great job of filtering spam. *shrugs*

[devon-may.livejournal.com]

I have a gmail account and I love it, because you never run out of space. You don't have to delete any emails at all. Plus, it's amazingly fast. I only use it for fandom things so I'm not too worried. If you change your mind, I can give you an invite.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I already have more email addresses than I can handle! In fact, I recently decided to have the, all forward to one spot, just to make my life a little easier. Thanks, though!

[eliminate.livejournal.com]

I have gmail, but I am wary of using it. I pretty much have left it sitting pretty *shrugs* I like Juno better. but, all I send are smutty homoerotic things anyway *snicker* well, not necessarily smutty. I mean, if I was sending valuabe tings such as passwords and such, though, then I'd use a different account. So far, I haven't used it, and I feel no need to have millions of emails for me to sort through. That's why Java script invented the wonderful 'delete' button.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't need all that space, at this point. Actually, I could use it at work, where I only have a measley 10 Mb for email!

[sandrine]

http://www.gmx.net offers 1GB as well. Without the invite system, or the disadvantages of GMail. *shrugs*

[sodamnquirky.livejournal.com]

This has nothing to do with the post, I'm sorry.
I just finished reading your beautiful story "Left My Heart"... let me tell you something, it's not only beautiful, it's hot. I don't even smoke and reading it made me feel like I needed boxes and boxes of ciggarette packages.
Wait, that's not my point. Sorry again.
It mentioned something about a sequel and I'm just curious to know if you're still planing to write it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking just to piss you off by asking when it will be done, I'm asking because while I never read WIPs, I'm truly curious to know if this story will be continued. I want to keep up with it and I want to know how do I do this. Do I friend you? Do you have a website?
Or if the story is not going to be continued then just ignore this silly comment.
Thank you, for writing the story and if you read this comment then thanks for that too.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks so much for your comments on LMH! As you may or may not be aware, the version that's currently posted on my LJ is the rough draft, and right now I'm feverishly working on the final version. (In fact, I spent quite a lot of time on that this weekend, and I'm very pleased with the way it's turning out.) I hope to have the final draft sent off to beta in the next week or so, and then I'll starting writing the sequel in earnest. September is going to be a crazy month for me, so I don't anticipate starting to post the first draft of the sequel until October. I've been working on it here and there, and I want to post it in regular weekly chunks, like I did with LMH. In order for that to happen (and for my own and my betas' sanities), I need to be about halfway through writing it before I start posting.

So, yeah, it's coming! :-D The best way to keep informed with that is to watch this LJ. (Feel free to friend me, of course.) I'll also make announcements in the usual places when the final version of LMH gets posted and when the sequel starts. And yes, I do indeed have a web site! It's listed in the Navigation menu on my LJ's main page.

Thanks again!

[sodamnquirky.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you very very much!
I'm friending you, of course and I bookmarked your site. :)

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

At first I was wondering what the big deal was as well. Until gmail, I wasn't interested in webmail at all, seeing as I work at home and so this is the only computer I ever use.

As Helens and others have mentioned, it's great for tagging, and since almost all my writing these days is either RPGs or other co-written stuff, it's great. Instead of having 50 separate emails at the end of a fic, they're all threaded together into one. I keep them in my inbox until I tag, then I archive them, and when I get a tag back, it pops the entire thread back into my inbox.

The one thing that's bad about threading is that it works by using the from address, which means all LJ replies will clump together, as will all JF, and all GJ. If someone uses the subject line in a comment then it will see that as a separate email, but how often do people use the subject line? Not very, IME. This really annoyed me at first, because I was used to saving comment replies. Now I've just decided to trash them, because otherwise every new reply popped hundreds of LJ comments back into my inbox in one huge thread.

The storage capacity is a plus for me, too. Verizon's email storage is really small, so even though I check my email several times a day and download it to my HD, deleting it all from the server, if people sent me large files, they would often bounce. I translate doujinshi into English, and most people choose to send me scans to translate from. Obviously the bigger the scans the better, especially since some doujinshi are written by hand and can be very hard to read at smaller sizes. So now I have everyone send me scans to gmail so I don't have to worry about bouncing. It's really been great for that.

The labelling system gmail uses instead of folders appeals to my obsessive-compulsiveness. All my tags get labelled by who I'm tagging with, and if it's a three or four way tag, I can put multiple labels on.

As for the ads, honestly it took me ages to even find where they were. I was expecting something big and obvious, but it's just this little column of text on the side of some emails (not even all of them). Also, the ads are on the side of the threads, not the individual emails, so even if you have 100 emails threaded together, there's only one set of ads. It's much better than the flashing, moving banner ads slapped all over Yahoo and Hotmail.

And the whole "oh no, my email is being read!" thing is laughable when you see what the ads are for. Targetted, my ass. They just pick up on random words. One current fic of mine is called "The High Cost of Renting" and so there's an ad for financial stuff. Another is from the Sable Knot RPG and so there's talk of Eton and Oxford and there are ads about boarding school. Another makes mention of caffiene and being tired and there are ads for tea... Over half the stuff doesn't have any ads at all.

As for the complaint of "gmail encourages you not to delete", the fact is that gmail can encourage you not to all they want, but it's still up to you if you want to delete. I delete stuff all the time and only save that which is essential. And sure Google may still have it on their server even after they've said they deleted it, but so may Hotmail or Yahoo or even my own ISP.

There are a lot of things I like about gmail, but the main uses I can see are for receiving large files and for tagging, so if you do neither, then I think that lessens a lot of its appeal.