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Comment by traskjd | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like you should just use Google Photos as it delivers most of that, with perhaps some improvements in 'backing up' outside of GP.

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Well, perhaps apart from the fact that you are giving your photos to the company that makes money on targeted advertising and invests bajillions into AI technologies that learn from data.

Some of us are distinctly uncomfortable with that, especially given what has been done to Gmail — your mail is being fed to machines and used to build an advertising profile for you.

>especially given what has been done to Gmail — your mail is being fed to machines and used to build an advertising profile for you.

Google has not mined emails in GMail for ad targeting for years now: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...

They have, however, let (apparently) arbitrary third-parties have access to said emails.

Context?

This sounds nefarious, but for all we know you're talking about the people in the To line.

According to Google, it's “apps” – but this isn't Android apps; it's something that lets them directly fetch your emails from Google. I think it might be associated with OAuth, but despite their incredibly clear privacy policy I'm still not sure who exactly it is.

Don't worry; I'm fairly sure it doesn't happen unless you click through a pop-up.

Are you just saying "Gmail has an API, and it is possible to authorize apps to access your Gmail via the API", which will be listed (along with every other app with access to your Google Account in any way) in your account permissions page @ https://myaccount.google.com/permissions

Or something else?

It would be very embarrassing if I were. I vaguely remember it being something Bad, but I didn't make notes on it.

Ok, I stand corrected. Your mail WAS fed to machines and used to build an advertising profile for you.

I am constantly amazed and how people trust and defend corporations like Google, given what the incentives are. Why do you think Google provides services like GMail or Google Photos? Look at their revenue streams: it's an ad-tech company.

>I am constantly amazed and how people trust and defend corporations like Google, given what the incentives are. Why do you think Google provides services like GMail or Google Photos?

I'm not sure how you got that out of my comment. I was stating a fact.

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