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Comment by twelvechairs | Hacker News Reader

Why should Google be exempt from criticism? I think its good that a big company like Microsoft is making this kind of privacy an issue.

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What issue, though? That your email is scanned by an algorithm to determine relevancy for ads? Guess what, your email is scanned by an algorithm on outlook.com too, to determine whether it's spam. It's exactly the same thing.

No it's not. Because I WANT spam protection... I don't want ads.

Just like it's fine for an electrician to enter my house to fix a power point. It is NOT okay for anyone to enter my house in order to sell me random things.

If you don't want it, don't use Gmail. It's not fine to call an electrician to your house to fix the power point in return for you letting them sell you random things, and then say "no, I don't want the things, I just want the fix!"

It's not a breach of your privacy any more than spam filters reading your email is.

> If you don't want it, don't use Gmail.

I'm pretty sure that is exactly the point Microsoft are making with this campaign.

They are using the fact you can't opt out of a "feature" as an excuse to opt out of a "product".

They are leveraging peoples perception of 'Privacy' to do that.

Really do you think buying an Audi will mean you can kiss the girl at Prom? Or by wearing Calvin Klein you'll look amazing from every angle? ... No, Ads lie all the time... Chrome isn't technically "Faster" but they still run ads that say as much...

You are conflating two different issues, "I don't like seeing ads" and "algorithms reading my mail is a privacy breach". If you don't like seeing ads, I think even Gmail themselves would tell you not to use Gmail. But it's not a breach of privacy!

Or are you trolling?

I'm not conflating anything, I'm pointing our privacy was just a vehicle that was being used to deliver a message, and that message is valid:

"If you don't want gmail splashing ads all over your messages, switch to outlook."

No need to be a jerk about it and accuse me of trolling.

> I'm pointing our privacy was just a vehicle that was being used to deliver a message, and that message is valid

The vehicle is not, though. There is no issue of privacy. They might as well have said "Gmail kills babies, switch to outlook", it's exactly as true (which is, to say, not at all).

You have been profiled, and the profile works over time and across content. That data exists, and is sold to advertisers. The profile is about you, including private discourse between, say, you and family, and numerous research papers have shown it ties to exactly you even if it's supposedly anonymous. This is absolutely a privacy "issue" even if it's not clear to you personally how this might be a privacy breach.

That's far different than spam, where the messages are profiled, not the people exchanging them.

There are two different ways ads can be displayed. Either the message is scanned for a topic and ads are displayed to you based on it, or they build a profile about you, like you described. You can opt out of that:

https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/preferences/?hl=en

That's not a privacy issue. That's a I don't want feature X (ads) issue.

Unfortunately for you, you can't pick and choose what you want when Google are providing you with a free email service. Generating personalized ads is how they make money from this venture.

As the saying goes: "If you're not paying for it; You're the product, not the customer."

Actually, you can. Despite what the website says, you can opt out of personalized advertising:

https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/preferences/?hl=en#o...

You can pay for gmail and have no ads:

http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6...

Here is perhaps a better link: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html

In general Google Apps is a great product for small-medium sized businesses. As is Office 365.

Google is horrible for a company's IT security team though. Very difficult to lock things down from a firewall level when Google won't tell you the IP addresses individual apps run on (say if I want to allow Google Hangouts but not Chrome Remote Desktop), and some of their apps won't work properly through a proxy or VPN. There's enough cases where Google has been unable/unwilling to help configure that someone could easily begin to question their value.

Google seemingly doesn't want you to allow access to one thing but not another; it's an all or nothing proposition. Their heavy use of load-balancing exacerbates this issue.

"You are doing it wrong".

You do not lock the apps by IP, because they run on many different machines in different data centers. What is running on specific machine is dynamic, based on momentary requirements.

If you do not want to allow Google Hangouts, use your administrator console.

It's not quite that simple due to the VPN and proxy configurations we have. Google Hangouts just will not work over a VPN unless it's allowed directly through the firewall, which requires a firewall rule. Typically firewall rules are based on IP addresses and ports. Allowed Google Hangouts (which we want) also has the side effect of allowing Chrome Remote Desktop (which we don't want) directly through the firewall.

"You are doing it wrong" is not an acceptable answer in an enterprise environment unless the vendor is willing to work with their customers to make sure it's possible to actually do it right. But that would mean the vendor would need real customer service...

Well, no. It's not the same thing. Scanning my content so that you make more money is different from scanning my content so that I get less spam. The second is a service. If you don't encrypt your email (almost nobody does it) every server serving your email can access the email text. The point is what they do with it. If they use it to make something useful for me (allowing me to read email) that's OK. Targeting ads is, as a minimum, borderline...

You knew this when you signed up. Plus, it's not a privacy issue. No human is sitting there, reading your emails. How is the spam algorithm reading your emails fine from a privacy standpoint while the ads algorithm isn't?

How do you know Google doesn't create and store an ad profile based on what your email contents usually are? Example: StravosK is likely to have high cholesterol and too much debt.

How do I know Microsoft (or any other provider) doesn't? This is a risk you accept when you give your data to third parties.

How do I know Microsoft (or any other provider) doesn't?

Anything can happen but Google admits that it scans your email to serve relevant ads. Now is that data deleted after that email or do they note that you have x, y and possibly z?

Offhand, I can't think of anything that algorithmic spam removal can do to compromise my privacy. I don't have to be careful around spam removal.

Targeted ads, on the other hand, can provide a lot of information to the advertiser if I respond to the ad. If targeted advertising is showing up in my email, I have to make sure that I do not respond to the ads. Essentially, a targeted ad is a little privacy land mine that I can easily step on if I don't keep my guard up.

I've never accidentally clicked on an ad, I think they're pretty out of the way in that regard. If that's what worries you, sure. Otherwise, the fact that you want to respond to the ad can provide a lot of information to the advertiser. If you're worried about that, just don't respond.

Or if you are really interested in the product, just search for it again in incognito window, so that they cannot possibly relate the two campaigns (assuming you are worried the advertizer had a way to tell that the campaign has been clicked through a gmail ad, which afaik is not possible)

Yep, I don't think there's any way for them to track that you're the person associated with the email if you search for it in a new tab, but an incognito window can't hurt.

In an odd twist, providing more information to the advertiser could also be doing you a service. The more information the advertisers have, the more targeted the ads, and thus a higher CPC. The increased revenue for Google can mean either more money for products for you (perpetuating the products->ads->products cycle) or the ability for them to show fewer ads.

It is not, a spamfilter tries to understand if the message is legitimate, while an ad injection algorithm tries to understand the message to extract your interests from it. One of the algorithms is actually trying to extract privacy relevant information, while in the case of a spamfilter any such data is just coincidental.

So? Where's the breach? An algorithm knowing the subject of the message doesn't worry me, as long as all they do with it is display ads from the same broad category. If they're doing something they're not telling us, well, any other email provider could also be doing this.

Whatever they think will work for them. It's just not striking a chord with the HN audience, clearly. I find it difficult to believe that it would strike a chord with any large audiences, but perhaps their focus groups say otherwise.

For me the Scroogle site gives off the same sort of vibe that a conspiracy theory site does. It doesn't look like it came out of Microsoft. Perhaps it's not meant to. Perhaps they want it to look like a grassroots movement against Google. In the end everyone sees the Outlook logo, though. Then it feels a little deceptive.

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