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Comment by dotBen | Hacker News Reader

the tl:dr of this comment thread is that most HN'ers have sadly taken the question too literally and are commenting on the fact Google reads emails with a definition of "read" being that of "parse" (ie computationally). I think most people know and expect they obviously do that, for advertising targeting etc. I can't believe people are shocked or surprised at that.

Which is a shame because I think it's pretty clear the OP is actually asking about Google employees reading your email, which is a valid question but sadly lost in the fight over semantics. :/

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> Which is a shame because I think it's pretty clear the OP is actually asking about Google employees reading your email

Unless you run your own smtp and pop/imap mail servers, there is no way to be sure no one will read your emails. Even then, your servers could get hacked or maybe your contacts use a hosted solution (and most people do) that could get hacked, there is again no guaranty. The only work around is to fully encrypt your emails, even then someone could steal your private keys, or you could be using an unpatched encryption software etc.

It's a matter of trust and time saving. Do you trust google, yahoo employees etc to not spy on you more than you trust your ability and your contacts ability not to get your mail servers hacked? How much of your time and money are you ready to waste maintaining such a server?

Except that Lucent have no real reason to put firmware in a fiber switch to read your email as it goes down the tubes.

A company that makes all it's money from targetted ads - might

Did you even read parent's post? We all agree that google (and yahoo, and hotmail) parse our emails to offer better ads and to index them for search. What we're talking about is bad employees reading your emails for their own curiosity.

This is getting off-topic, but did you forget about AT&T's secret rooms that were recording internet traffic? It's not just Google that wants to read your mail. Governments want to spy on their citizens, and ISPs are (allegedly) cooperating in the effort.

sure but that's basically a "constant" in that it's going to happen regardless of where you receive your emails.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NarusInsight

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70621

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)

Unless you run your own smtp and pop/imap mail servers, there is no way to be sure no one will read your emails.

I think you really want to encrypt your email for that kind of peace of mind. Of course you need buy in from your contacts.

Actually there is another option which is to store emails on a secure webserver instead of sending them, and send "you've got mail" notifications instead. There are some usability issues such as message threading and what not, but technically this is much simpler to set up than the conventional encrypted email.

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