[Techtalk] Gmail (was questions re installing gcc-3.4.2)

[James]

Gretchen Dziengel wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 11:49:50PM -0700 or thereabouts, Darlene Wallach wrote:
> 
>>What concerns me about gmail is that they keep it and
>>search it - it would be availble for the govt to access.
>>It is nobody's business.
>>
>>I have no idea what gmail is like. Do you have to login
>>to google and access it like people do with hotmail and
>>yahoo email accounts?
> 
> I have a gmail account - It's exactly like hotmail and yahoo as far as
> accessing it.  The way they organize threads is pretty good.  (They call
> it conversations)  Instead of each message listed seperately they list
> each thread once and when you click on it it displays all the messages
> on one page.
> 
> I'm not worried about some automated process scanning my e-mails and
> displaying ads.  Gmail's privacy statement says my e-mails will remain
> private unless they are required by law to disclose them and so on.  No
> different than any other company with my information.
> 
> The point is Gmail is no different than any other webmail as far as
> privacy is concerned.  Google just tells you they are scanning so you
> get good ads where as I haven't been able to find any statements from
> Hotmail about the privacy of the content of my messages.  Not that I use
> either Hotmail or Gmail for anything important.  Gmail isn't impressive
> enough for me to give up procmail and mutt.

Apart from anything else, Hotmail and co *also* scan the e-mail 
traversing their systems, to detect and kill viruses and spam - they 
just don't make their ads context-sensitive. Gmail's approach isn't any 
more open to abuse than any other email system, it just attracted more 
attention because they were doing something more interesting with it :-(


James.