Gmail messages 'read by human third parties' | Hacker News Reader

Gmail messages 'read by human third parties'

bbc.com

25 pointscolinprince7 comments

So, explicitly giving third parties permission to read your messages means that said third parties might be able to read your messages?

And this is a “Dirty Secret”?

I’m really struggling to see any generous way that this could be considered reporting and not just sensationalist junk.

It's 2018; "reporting" and "sensationalism" are synonyms. ;)

When Google introduced the whole "ads based on your emails" they made a distinction between a human and an algorithm reading your emails. People were more OK with an algorithm because its not like the algorithm would make fun of you at lunch with their work buddies.

Humans are also incapable of reading something and not passing judgement/making assumptions about the person who wrote it. An algorithm could theoretically be neutral. A lot of people are not prepared for the brave new world where "AI" is becoming judge jury and executioner.

Unfortunately this is the state of news today. Be it tech, politics, even medicine, etc. It all has an invigorated agenda and slant. There is no more attempt at being reporting facts and then letting people decide what things are. Everything is "The Enquirer" in their reporting.

PBS nightly news just had good coverage on this: the reporter was criticizing Google for not helping users make better choices, specifically many people might give a third party app the access rights for all a user’s gmail data.

This makes sense to me. Google is careful to guide people through their own privacy settings, but leave the door open to third party developers.

Google wants to build a platform around gmail, but I personally think this is against users’ best Interests.

EDIT: link to PBS coverage I saw tonight https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ1uKwxpoDc

The message Gmail presents is:

This will allow APP_NAME to: Run as a Gmail add-on [More info] View your email messages when the add-on is running [More info]

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The '[More info]' tool tip presents:

Allow this application to view your email messages when the add-on is running Access is temporary; only available to the add-on when it is running within an opened email

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I think for your typical user that is not making it clear that 'employees at APP_NAME can read your emails'.

So people grant access to their mails and are surprised their email is accessed? Of course this could happen, and close to everyone knows that. That's why so many refuse to grant those rights. That's what all those dialogues are for. Seriously BBC if you try to bash another tech company at least show us some shady whistleblower people can idolise later on.

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