In your previous news letter you answered some questions related to Quarantine in anti virus and another one about FTP.
When I opened your newsletter in my inbox (gmail-free account), on the right
hand side I could see lots of advertisements related to anti virus and FTP
tools etc. How do they come if Google doesnât read my email content? what about
privacy then??
Ads are, of course, one of the prices you pay for your use of a free service
like Googleâs Gmail. Naturally, itâs in Googleâs best interest to show you the
most interesting, and relevant ads possible. In fact, itâs kind of in your best
interest too.
So yes, to do that Google does read your email. But Google doesnât really
read your email.
I know thatâs a tad confusing and Iâll try and sort it out.
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Your Email Provider Can See All
Itâs important to realize that your email provider â any email provider â
can see your email. Unless youâve somehow encrypted it the full text and
contents of any email you send or receive could be viewed by your email
provider â be it your ISP, Google, Hotmail or some other service.
practical necessity.â
Thatâs simply the way email works, and always has. (The sameâs actually true
for instant messaging and texting as well.)
The key thing to realize is that given the massive amounts of email that are
sent every day, your mail provider just doesnât have the time to pay attention
to all that email.
To put it more bluntly: youâre just not that interesting. Sure, they could
read your email, but why would they? Unless youâve got law enforcement watching
you for some reason, thereâs just no reason that anyone would care.
So, no, itâs highly unlikely that anyone but you or your recipient is paying
attention to the contents of your email.
If youâre truly concerned and have something that you must keep private even
from the infinitesimal chance your email provider might peek, then you probably
shouldnât be using free services, and you should seriously consider encrypting
your email â even though email encryption remains very difficult in any general
sense.
Contextual Advertising
So, what then about those incredibly well targeted ads youâre seeing when
you read your email?
If youâre reading this article on my web site, then itâs pretty much the
same as the Google ads that are shown along side this text. The software that
selects the ads reads the contents of the page looking for relevant keywords to
get a sense of what the page is about, and then tries to display ads that are
targeted at or near that same topic.
Iâve often joked that the Google ads on Ask Leo! are often so well targeted
that they are an answer for some people. (Theyâre still ads, donât get
me wrong, but sometimes theyâre amazingly well targeted.)
Thatâs all that happens when you read you email in Googleâs web interface.
The ad serving software looks at your email â you can call it âreading your
emailâ if you like â and tries to identify via relevant keywords what the email
message is about. It then uses those keywords to pull ads from its inventory of
available ads that are semi related.
Thatâs absolutely why when you are reading an email all about, say, FTP, the
ads along side might well be from various FTP related vendors and for FTP
related tools and services.
Itâs A Good Thing, Really
Advertising to support free services is a very real and practical necessity.
Ask Leo! itself would not exist in its present form without advertising
revenue. None of the other approaches to revenue that people sometimes suggest
â such as donations â would come anywhere close. This is one of the reasons
that wholesale ad-blockers â tools that block ads on all sites â make me very
uncomfortable; they are blocking the very thing that allows sites like Ask Leo!
and the majority of the internet to be free to everyone.
Gmailâs and other free email services are no different â theyâre ad
supported.
So, given that you will see ads, which is more useful: ads that are
completely random and have absolutely no interest to you, or ads that actually
relate to the things you do, see and talk about every day?
Naturally, Iâd claim the latter.
Donât Like It? Alternatives
Aside from simply ignoring the ads, which most people probably do, thereâs
really only one way to avoid contextual advertising in your email:
- Donât use the service.
For that matter, itâs the right solution to avoiding contextual advertising
â or advertising in general â if thatâs youâre desire. If you donât want to see
ads, then donât visit sites that are advertising supported and donât use
services that are advertising supported.
For Gmail specifically there is one additional alternative:
- Use a desktop email client rather than the web email interface.
Gmail supports POP3 access to your email which allows you to download the
email to your PC and view it there. There are no ads when you do this. Itâs
only the web interface to Gmail that has advertising.
Just make sure, as always, that youâre backing up your PC and email whether
you download or not.
Another way to protect your privacy on Google is to continue using it, but prevent them from reading your emails and make money by marketing to you. The free CloakGuard browser plugin letâs you Cloak your GMAIL messages. (It also works with Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo).
You still use GMAIL the same way, but select the message youâd like to keep private, pick a Keyword and CLOAK it before sending. Then, neither Google nor its advertising partners can read your messages. Only those people youâve shared your keyword with can read your message.
Free Download â https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/194385/
Free Online tool â http://cloakguard.com/tryitfree.php
Demo â http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4qN3TBqx08
Ad block Plus also removes the Google ads on the side of all emails.
I use Adblock however I take your point about ads. Of course Adblock doesnât block ads that are embedded in the website, such as your messages from your sponsors. But Yahoo in particular has advertising that is really annoying, because it flashes and jumps about in the corner of my vision, so I have no compunction in blocking it.
I use Thunderbird 3.0.6 and it works well for me. I am wondering if Instantbird will ever come out of the beta stage.
I sort of like the ads off to the side on my gmail; theyâre related to my email subjects and therefore are of some interest to me.
My âlaugh of the dayâ is when I go into my âspamâ
folder, and the advert tie-in that comes up is
ârecipes for Spamâ meat product!
Leo, you wrote:
I move to strike out your first use of the word âreadâ and insert in lieu thereof the phrase âscan, using its search engine,â so that the passage, if so amended, would read:
Surely that would be much clearer!
Is there a second to the motion�
You mention GMailâs PO3 support. It also supports imap which also allows the email to be read in a 3rd party mail client.
Iâve known about key word targeting for a long time, and it doesnât bother me (as long thereâs nothing annoying about the ads themselves). I am a little concerned, however, about something I noticed today. Yesterday, I sent a friend an e-mail via a gmail account with a picture of my cat attached. When I opened my friendâs reply this morning, the sidebar had ads for cat-related products. Neither my original letter nor my friendâs reply contains any references to cats or cat-related issues (not even the lolspeek term âkittehâ). Furthermore, the pic is a tad on the blurry side, and the lighting isnât very good. I get what you say about my not being interesting enough for Google to read my e-mail personally, but it seems to me that unless G is using image scanners that are sensitive enough to recognize a cat in a not-very-good picture taken by an amateur with a cheap digital camera, some human must have seen that picture. It could be a coincidence, I suppose, but as a Star Trek character said, âI believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I donât trust coincidences.â Can you shed any light on this, Leo?
I donât have any ads in my web-gmail. What do I wrong?
Yes they read your email. I was getting hit up my google every couple of days to come interview with them. After a doctor visit in which they discovered cancer, I wrote an email to family members about my cancer at that point all emails from google about a job stopped.
been emailing my sibs/lawyer about possible tm issues on google. I did no ask google a thing, then i get email from adword express that i am being dropped due to tm issue.so, i call & find they just picked up on it â what? after using the same name on my site for years and only a few months of using adwords,now there is a tm issue? explain that? suffice it to say, this has changed my online presence and things could get worse-
I had the same experience like Mike, so YES they read your mail.