Gmail in the News 693
roadies writes "Despite all the negativity and privacy concerns that surround Gmail, it has still gained cult-like status where net-d0rks feel self validated by having a gmail address and will do anything to get one. Services like the Gmail Machine, a randomized Gmail lotto that has people hitting refresh until they get carpel-tunnel in the index finger, reports over 7 million pageviews (though, definitely not uniques) in 3 days and 55 invites given away. They just added 222 more through donators who have given up invites in exchange for a text link on the high-traffic site. GmailSwap (covered recently on /.) has given away everything from cameras to good vibes. Good news for hardpressed geeks: The invites are becoming more and more available and mainstream. Ebay once had gmail invites going for a couple hundred dollars. Now, nobody is bidding on them anymore, so you can purchase one the old-fashioned eBay way for a dollar or two." Reader marklyon writes "Third party developers have stepped in with utilities that enhance and improve GMail. One utility, Mbox
& Maildir to Gmail Loader allows users to upload their existing email to
their GMail account. Another, POP
Goes the GMail, offers the ability to access your GMail account with any POP
mail reader, giving users the ability to permanently archive messages. GTray
lives in your taskbar and alerts you to incoming messages. Other, more
general programs, allow you to forward your Hotmail
or Yahoo! Mail messages to your
new GMail account. The question that remains, however, is whether Google will
work with or against third party developers in GMail's future."
My experiences with Gmail invitations (Score:5, Informative)
Initially I got a couple of invitations I could give away, every couple of weeks, and it was easy to find close friends to give them to. Then I found I had seven invitations this week and had run out of obvious candidates. I tried gmailswap, but the interesting ones (like a pound of Kona coffee) went too quickly, and the others were uninteresting to me. So I sent a note to my orkut friends, and quickly had well over a dozen requests for accounts despite including a disclaimer pointing to gmail-is-too-creepy.com [gmail-is-too-creepy.com] :). I gave away the ones I had, and surprisingly got a few more the
very next day. I still have a queue of about 5 people I owe accounts
to.
PS. This was a really, really nice Slashdot article, with a treasure trove of gmail information. Well done.
Yahoo has retaliated (Score:5, Informative)
Use spymac.com (Score:2, Informative)
And it existed before gmail
Re:I'm lost (Score:5, Informative)
1) It's webmail like the ORIGINAL hotmail before MS tookover. Few ads, non popups, just gets you to your business
2) Google search for your e-mail, nice and fast. Beats the hell outta Eurora and Outlook searching
3) Threaded e-mails. I sent out an e-mail to a group of 10 friends, they all responded, I responded to some, etc. It all gets stored in ONE thread.
Donate those invites! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm lost (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GTray Mirror (Score:2, Informative)
Problem Solved (Score:4, Informative)
Problem solved?
Advantage: Fast (Score:2, Informative)
I do need to check POP mail (IMAP would be grand), but I realize they're probably holding off on that until the real release.
I'm glad someone values keyboard commands again.
It's a neat idea but... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm lost (Score:1, Informative)
Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations (Score:3, Informative)
In return I hope you guys send me an invite or two back in good time.
Have fun!
PGP Anyone (Score:5, Informative)
The propensity for unencrypted emails to be read and intercepted has existed on the net, but people just ignored the possibility or figured the probability of it happening them is low.
If it bothers you there's an indefinate log of your email, encrypt it--So what if google shows you nothing by PGP ads on the right side of your screen ?
Donate Gmail invitations to troops (Score:5, Informative)
From the entry [wilwheaton.net]:
A worthy cause, I should think. Currently, I believe people are just looking over at gmailswap for service men and women to donate their invites to, until this 'clearinghouse' is created.
I thought some slashdotters might be willing to participate.
If you would like to be invited (Score:5, Informative)
I will reply with your current position in the queue of people wanting an invite, and when I get more invitations (currently 5 every one to three days) I'll send you one.
All I ask is this:
1. Please tell me if you get invited before your turn in queue, otherwise I will waste an invitation.
2. Please don't sell this invite, or sell the invites you subsequently get from your own account.
People who sell or extort for invites lack integrity and are selfish. Don't be that kind of person.
Multiple accounts violate the Gmail TOS... (Score:5, Informative)
From the Gmail Help Center:So, unless you've covered your tracks very well, don't expect to hold onto those accounts. I know of at least one case where a user who made more than one account had all his accounts shut down.
Gmail is currently in beta. Use of that beta is a priviledge, not a right, so abusing it is the quickest way to find yourself locked out.
Re:Gmail doesn't support firefox (Score:3, Informative)
Boon to ebay sellers (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Use spymac.com (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Getting Invited (Score:4, Informative)
"
If you have been using Blogger for a while then you probably already have an invitation. Sign on to blogger (as if to update your blog) and look carefully over on the right.
Re:I'm lost (Score:3, Informative)
Not sure if you wanted to leave them in the inbox, but if you just want mailing lists filed off into only their own labels, then you can also set "skip Inbox", to get mail-folder-like abilities.
GMail Invites: I've got a bunch (Score:3, Informative)
hey all, i keep getting new invites on a fairly regular basis, if you just head-on over to my blog [blogspot.com], find the "GMail Invites" post and add a comment with some info as to why u want a gmail account and a valid email address (feel free to use creative obfuscation to protect yourselves from spam crawler bots).
I can't guarantee you an invite but your chances should be pretty good. I'll favor in that order (mostly), people who have a blog on blogger.com, people who have at least bothered to register with blogger.com to place comments, people I've marked as /. friends, people who've marked me as their friend, unless i change my mind :)
Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations (Score:4, Informative)
First, I'm fairly certain that YOUR privacy ranks WAY higher than any company's supposed "right" to a profit.
Secondly, the only way the advetiser would find out is by setting up a mail account of their own, and then sending mail to themself, trying to find out wether or not it's working. They could then easily save copies of the web-views, and use those.
Thirdly, such a lawsuit would be a civil matter, and I doubt that you can just get a judge to sign over a subpoena to go searching though million of people's mail. This relates to point number one.
This is of course dependent on the legal system, and we've all seen that they're very keen on protecting our rights, right?
Get a clue (Score:3, Informative)
So what - I don't care about any single email being exposed to someone's eyes. But I do worry if someone has access to ALL of my email all the time - I even wouldn't care if they would read it, but I do not like to be analyzed and profiled via content of my email.
>No human will ever read your email.
This is really a stupid argument - OF COURSE they won't because they can't possibly get enough humans to read gazillons of messages in millions of accounts!
It is impossible, it'd be too expensive and it wouldn't work because humans can't analyze huge amounts of data.
When will people realize that it is FAR WORSE that AI bots "read" (analyze, parse, whatever) your email because:
a) they don't "forget"
b) they can easily "read" all emails of all accounts
c) it is cost effective (essentially free) to use them for any and all purpose they see fit.
I'm not claiming they are doing bad things with it, but they certainly have all the tools they need.
So those who mind would probably prefer to keep their email on less creepy a place (one that doesn't analyze your contacts, URLs in your email and content of your messages to show you ads and whatnot).
Here's what WINNING SCREEN looks like (Score:2, Informative)
I got mine on the 3rd try, but I figure seeing the text of the screen will help you boys and girls that are trying to write SCRIPTS automatically keep trying the Gmail Machine!
And no, you're not getting my new gmail address! I want to keep it spam free.
Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations (Score:4, Informative)
First, I'm fairly certain that YOUR privacy ranks WAY higher than any company's supposed "right" to a profit.
This is simply not the case. When you agree to the terms of Google Mail, it specifically says that your email will be provided to any court if they are given a subpoena. Right to privacy be damned; if a court issues a subpoena, Google will pony up the data, rather than be found in contempt of court.
Thirdly, such a lawsuit would be a civil matter, and I doubt that you can just get a judge to sign over a subpoena to go searching though million of people's mail. This relates to point number one.
Yes, you can. In a civil matter, discovery allows both the plaintiff and defendant to subpoena corporate data and documents that apply to the case. If the case involved a dispute over adwords, the subpoena might very well include "the contents of all messages that triggered the customer's ads to appear." Google would have no choice but to comply.
For an example of this, look at the SCO vs. IBM case. This is a civil matter as well, and both SCO and IBM have been subpoenaing millions of documents and source code and probably emails from each other as well.
Having said all of that, I don't want you to think I'm paranoid or anything. I use Gmail every day now, and I don't really care if they read my email or not. The reason why is because email is going in plaintext over the wire every day and Carnivore is probably already reading everything I send and receive anyway. Who cares about Google reading my email? I'm much more worried about the FBI reading it and building a profile on me.