Hacker News Reader

Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

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?

View on HN

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com