Thursday, May 13, 2004
Gmail
In case you haven't noticed there is a growing controversy over Google's offering of a new free email service. Google is promoting its new feature as a means of storing your emails forever since it comes with a gigabyte of space on their servers. The catch? Well, there are actually two of them. First, when you review your messages you will see advertisements that are selected based upon key words that are present in the emails. The idea that a computer is scanning individual communications has a lot of people worried about privacy. But keep in mind that no information is being sent out to the companies placing the ads.
The second issue is that Google is keeping a record of emails even after they have been deleted. The fear here is that the government or hackers will go after this data to gather information on people. Here are a couple of commentaries on Gmail, one by the Washington Post's Leslie Walker and another by CATO's (now CEI's) Wayne Crews.
PermaLink | 5:06 AM |
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The second issue is that Google is keeping a record of emails even after they have been deleted. The fear here is that the government or hackers will go after this data to gather information on people. Here are a couple of commentaries on Gmail, one by the Washington Post's Leslie Walker and another by CATO's (now CEI's) Wayne Crews.
PermaLink | 5:06 AM |
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