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Gmail Privacy Warning - Gmail reads E-mail's BODY

S

SoftwareEng

Senior member
It is confirmed. Gmail reads/analyzes the actual BODY of your E-mail, not just the subject, to display their context-sensitive ads on the right.

Example #1:
Subject tells me results of an online programming test I took.
Body contains a lot of information about "snow" and "snowplows".
Context ads show "Snow Removal", "Snow Plow Kits", "Snow Plow".

Example #2:
Subject is "NH"
Body says to buy "wool socks" and warm "jacket" for skiing.
Context ads show "Women's Outerwear Blowout", "Wool Socks", "80% Off Varsity Jackets".

WHAT THE HECK, GOOGLE! You sneaky bastards.

HACK: Use a non-english Subject to trick Google -- it will not display ANY context ads! Example: "privet dlya monstra" - but then, Google might start reading the body of the message again.
 
This just in: ALL mail on ANY mailserver is "read" by the mailserver's processor before being sent to you. What difference does it make whether or not ads are generated based on it? You think that if google didn't display ads that they'd be any less capable fo reading your emails stored on *THIER* server?
 
Originally posted by: Brainonska511
I hope that you didn't learn this just now. Everyone (but apprently, not including you) has known this for quite some time.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I actually just did - I thought they would stick only to subjects.
 
This was debated before Gmail was even released in 2004.

Guess what, MSN Hotmail does this, Yahoo! Mail, Lycos Mail... hell pretty well any website that has advertisments on it does this. All the ads on this site do too.. OMG TEH WORLD IS OVER.

So much for being a software'eng'.

Edit: on another note, I dont even have advertisments in my Gmail.. I havent for atleast a month.. Thats just when I first noticed it.
 
Probably most sites out there use the info you provide for custom content when possible. And if they don't they probably want to.

Not just mail but just about anything.
 
Originally posted by: notfred
This just in: ALL mail on ANY mailserver is "read" by the mailserver's processor before being sent to you. What difference does it make whether or not ads are generated based on it? You think that if google didn't display ads that they'd be any less capable fo reading your emails stored on *THIER* server?
Click to expand...

 
Wow...a free email service that reads your ultra-secret emails to provide you with specific advertising? Who woulda thunk it.


Yahoo > Gmail
 
it doesn't matter either way. as notfred said, the mailservers still read the mail. thats how filters work. now they are just looking at keywords to see if they can get a match and displays similar ads on the side. no need to be alarmed as its all the server scripts doing this, essentially bots.
if anything is actually stored in a server that people can read, and it is discovered, google could go down in flames since that would be breeching the line between legal and illegal. no need to worry.
 
Why does it matter if a non living entity is reading your e-mails?

It's not like there's a bunch of people sitting at Google reading your cyber sex e-mail to a hitch-hiker you picked up one day while on the way up to the mountain. It's a computer that looks in the body of the e-mail and makes ads off keywords.
 
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