Comment by zaphod4prez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaphod4prez | Hacker News Reader

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It would be more honest to say that "this is no longer true." For the majority of Gmail's existence, Gmail did use your actual email content for advertising.

And Google still processes the content of your emails, no? Are all of those smart features like identifying flight bookings done completely client-side (hint: they're not)?

> Although Google stopped scanning email content to tailor ads in 2017, last year the company started showing shopping ads in Gmail. And it still scans emails to facilitate so-called smart features such as the ability to add holiday bookings or deliveries straight to your calendar, or to autocomplete suggestions.

> Every way you interact with your Gmail account can be monitored, such as the dates and times you email at, who you are talking to, and topics you choose to email about, says Rowenna Fielding, founder of privacy consultancy Miss IG Geek.

[Source](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/09/how-priva...)

Sorry, sure, yes - for ~5 years, this has been true. 2017 was before my time, and I have no idea what was happening then.

> And Google still processes the content of your emails, no? Are all of those smart features like identifying flight bookings done completely client-side

Of course, no, but the same is true of things like spam detection. What is the difference between scanning emails to see if they are spam and scanning emails to see if they are flight details? Or to scan emails to see if they have malware? In all these cases they’re not used for anything outside of Workspace, and they all provide some value to users.

> Every way you interact with your Gmail account can be monitored, such as the dates and times you email at, who you are talking to, and topics you choose to email about

Sure, yes, this could be monitored. This is the equivalent of saying, “when you use a saas product, the provider can see what you do”. It’s both obvious and uncontroversial- even the e2e encrypted messaging apps can see who you are communicating with and when.

The important consideration is that Google doesn’t use this for anything that is personally identifiable. You can choose to believe this or not, that’s up to you, but the same is true of literally every saas service everywhere.

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