Google's Gmail Privacy Controversy

[Prospero]

I found this WIRED article about a bunch of prvacy groups' concern regarding Google's new Gmail system that will scan your emails for key works and customize the ads they provide you. Privacy advocates say this is a huge violation and blah blah blah, I don't really care. As far as I'm concerned, if you sign up to use Gmail and get the 1 gig storage capacity for free, what right to complain do you have? You get what you pay for, right? If you sign up to use their services, you agree to their terms of usage, right? So why on earth are the privacy paranoiacs so worried about a mail service that they are not being forced to use? I like to think it's fairly cut and dry here, but am I missing something?

 

[Mr Manifesto]

Well, one of the universal human rights is the right to privacy (Article 12). So, I suppose you could say that, even though this email service is free (or Gmail, whatever the ◊◊◊◊ that is), it does not automatically have the right to supersede what is a basic human right.

I could've written that last sentence better, but I can't be buggered.

 

[Nasarius]

If you care about privacy that much, use public key encryption, like PGP. I do for sensitive business communication. It's really that easy.

IMO, this isn't very intrusive. Google isn't selling your information to advertisers or the government. No one's reading your email. The only difference is, instead of giving you a random ad, Google's software looks at the text it's sending to you, generates a few bits of information, and selects an ad based on that. Doesn't bother me.