Fwd: philosophical question about gmail

[Bill Sconce]

On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 17:22:56 -0400
"Kevin D. Clark" <clark_k at pannaway.com> wrote:

> After all, the email was private and I never agreed to Gmail's
> policies.  I never really wanted anybody to actually profit
> (technically speaking) from the email; I just wanted to make a private
> comment.  Neither Dodge nor Google compensated me for my opinion
> either.



Ah.  An issue begins to take form in the fog.

Any ISP whatsoever uses computers to transport your e-mail.

If that ISP should elect to scan what you write and sell the
resulting information, they're essentially free to do so.

This means that any ISP (or any other machine on the Internet
which is in the route your e-mail travels) can harvest, scan,
and sell information in your e-mail.(*)

So the question is:  do you trust the ISPs?

Whether it's Google or mv.com, the issues are the same in the
end:  if they handle your data will they make use of it?  And
whatever their "privacy policy" today, will it change tomorrow,
or will it change when they need money, or will it change under
"the new owners" when the ISP is bought out?

Granted, when an ISP provides "free" e-mail you must be tempted
to believe that their privacy-policy threshold is lower, if only
because they must intend to do something to make up for "free".
In the case of Google, their motto is "don't be evil", and
they've had a better reputation than, say, Yahoo.  (Perhaps one
should say that WAS their motto, before the IPO...   :)

So I'd think the question of mailing lists enters into it only
secondarily.  Gmail?  Why should it be mistrusted more than
Yahoo?

-Bill

(*) Unless you use encryption.