Is this true?

[Ferrante]

I like Gmail and offered to it some friends on a newsgroup. Someone
sent me this URL, listing bad things about Gmail. Do you think this has
any merit to it?

http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html

Mark Ferrante

[Scott Villarosa]

That link is almost a year old now.... There's always going to people with
an opinion anti-gmail. I'm not going to bother reading that post again
though, so please just pass me my tinfoil-hat. :]

Oh okay, I will say this about the article: who the f__ uses gmail for
sensitive data anyway? And heck, it's not like you can't just start using
POP and PGP and/or digital IDs to send/receive encrypted messages. People
need to freakin' wake up! Don't use gmail then, fine. Google would probably
be a lot better off without these types of users anyway ("how do I get
invites?!!!!", "what are labels??!!!!!??!", "my inbox won't load in IE!!!
Help!"). Get my drift, Ferrante.

[Luis Amador]

lol

wow someone didn't get his morning coffee, anyway mark there's always
going to be rumors about something or someone when they are famous or
popular it doesn't matter is they are good or bad, true or false, is
like the old email that said that Bill Gates was the devil.

[Scott Villarosa]

But that's real, isn't it?

[Luis Amador]

according to the ASCII code it is :)

[Puneit]

I dun agree with the link anyway. If we can;t delete mails then how
does it trouble u..
Move to trash and forget it.. Trash never adds to your eligible space.
When Gmail servers run out of space they ll delete...Y r u worried
about it.
As per spam is concerned..I get 1 % of spam in Gmail of what i get in
hotmail and yahoo...

[Kass Lloyd (raeky)]

people fear the computer scanning their e-mails to find relevent ads..
only thing they don't know is that google is the first e-mail provider
to tell you that they're doing that. You can bet your ass hotmail and
yahoo are doing the same. ;-)

[Ferrante]

I was just wondering about it. I don't care if they read my mail, keep
it, or do anything with it. I like Gmail a lot, despite one problem I
have with it as far as forwarding BCC to numerous friends. Other than
that, I love Gmail. That is why I am always offering my invites to
everyone.

Thanks.
Mark

[Luis Amador]

Is a known fact that one of the ways to filter spam is by reading
emails before they arrive at your inbox, so yahoo and msn has been
doing it for quite a while now, is just that google does it for
advertisement too.

[Kass Lloyd (raeky)]

Yep, thats how all the spam filters work. But they don't keep a
per-box list of keywords for advertisement purposes. ;-)

But I don't care if Google scans my mail to give me more relevent ads.
If i must see ads I'd rather them be relevent to me then absoutely
nothing I'd ever want to look at. Heck when I search a lot of the
times the ads are what i'm searching for. Thats what makes google so
great. :D

[Rguy84]

I am not sure hotmail does it, unless it's very poorly. The e-mail I
sometimes read is like webmaster newsletters and such. I usually get
ads about buying clothes and its mainly women's clothing..

[Hidden Nook]

You want to know the dumb thing about it is? Yahoo and MSN can do the
same thing! They can scan your email too for marketing research!

I worked for a company who had their own email system set up. I was in
the IT department. And guess what! I could look over everyone's email
because of the access. But guess what! I never did unless a law was
broken because I (along with my colleges) did not care what was in the
inbox! Google doesn't either (and why would they with over 7 million
gmail boxes?).

Don't want it? Don't try it! Selah!

--
================================
Your Google Citizen,

Hidden Nook
http://hiddennook.blogspot.com

[Cracell]

the thing is I think we need paranoid people, who make stupid sites like this

they are morons yes, I mean anyone who cares that a program is reading
the word "shop" in there email and returning revelant ads is a freakin
moron who should jump off a bridge

but having paranoid people like this helps keep companies from
overstepping there bounds too much.

The thing that really pissed me off when gmail first started beta was
all this articles saying how gmail scans you email for revelant ads
and crap. yet never mentioned how yahoo and msn already do this.
It's in there bloody tOs moron reporters!!! The newbie alwasy gets
picked on.

--
-Cracell
http://the-system-is-down.blogspot.com/ - Read it and comment

[Rachel Garrett]

On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 14:32:11 -0000, Ferrante <MarkFe...@gmail.com> asked:

> Do you think this has
> any merit to it?
>
> http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html

Merit in what sense? Merit in the sense of conveying truth in a
logical manner? No. But merit in the sense of possessing an unusual
ability, yes--not many people have the ability to put two and two
together and get five.

SERVICE: Gmail
ADVERTISES: relevant links
VIA: text ads

SERVICE: Yahoo & Hotmail
ADVERTISES: boring stuff
VIA: images of female mammaries

Oh, this is rich. Just to check out my theory and make sure I wasn't
being unfair, I opened a new tab and went to MSN.com. First thing I
saw: some woman with her head "coyly" tilted to the side, wearing a
red thingy with spaghetti straps, leaning a bit into the screen. The
largest chunk of font on the screen reads "Women: What to wear on
February 14." The picture is captioned: "Impress him with these sexy &
practical ideas."

As if any sane woman would take tips from Gates & Co. on what to wear
in order to make herself more attractive to her lover. "Order today
and receive a FREE thong featuring an appliqued MSN Butterfly!"

--Rachel

[Luis Amador]

Thanks, for the morning laughs :)

[EU]

Hello, I"m new to Gmail, and I'm trying to see what is the "taste" of
it from the users. This group is great, I have just a coment on the
scanning and advertising target. I "manage an account on hotmail for my
father and a good friend of mine both in a foreing country (I think I
got paranoid by rading this posts) the country is Mexico. They have not
access the accouts for several rasons soy I open theme oance in while
to keep them active, funny thing is that my friend work address is in
the address book of hotmail and she "started to receive junk mail from
mortgage offices, law offices, banks and lenders. Point is that she had
never used the account to the date to send any mail, how this adds got
into her inbox?
As I said I'm getting paranoid just reading this post, I'm going to get
my thinfoil hat now....
EU

[Luis Amador]

they could have use a dictionary attack, that could get email address
even if they aren't use much