Google's Scanning of Gmail To Deliver Ads May Violate Federal Wiretap Laws 325
New submitter SpacemanukBEJY.53u writes "In a declaration that could make Google very nervous, a U.S. federal judge on Thursday rebuffed Google's defense of its targeted ad system that scans the content of Gmail. Judge Lucy Koh — who also heard the Apple-Samsung case — found Google's terms and conditions and privacy policy isn't clear to users. Koh subsequently allowed a class-action suit to proceed against the company (official ruling). The plaintiffs in the suit allege Google violates federal and state wiretap laws by scannning the messages sent by non-Gmail and Gmail users."
Re:Oh for crying out loud (Score:5, Interesting)
By this logic, all mail virus scanners are also guilty.
Barracuda should be worries about that.
Amazon Does this too (Score:5, Interesting)
Google isn't the only one that reads your mail.
If you have a Kindle Fire or Fire HD they are reading it too. I had the upsetting experience of reading an email on my Kindle Fire HD that announced my father's death and then not more than a few hours later was served a "recommendation" on my Kindle a book on how to write a Eulogy.
I deleted my email account information from the kindle and shut down the recommendation system on the device... and I told Amazon how creepy they were... At least Google hasn't served creepy ads like that... so far...
Maybe Amazon should learn from Google and adopt "Don't Be Creepy" as their motto. Are you listening, Mr. Bezos?
[By the way I tried at the time to put Amazon's actions up as a news story on Slashdot... but it was not picked up as a story...]
Informed consent? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a long-time Google Apps user, and my company's domain is on all mail receipents' mail, not "gmail.com". So how can you have implied consent when the sender doesn't know that the mail is being sent through Google?
Re:Virus scanning is a service (Score:2, Interesting)
As I understand it, that's actually a key part of Judge Koh's ruling: The *sender* of the email doesn't know that their email will be scanned for profit, only the receiver. And it's the sender's communication that's being wiretapped.
The sender "can't take their custom elsewhere".
Re:Oh for crying out loud (Score:3, Interesting)
Yahoo has been doing this off-and-on for the past year. They will even embed ads of a competitor of the company that sent the newsletter based on key words. They finally updated their TOS in June this year but they were doing it well before then.
Source, I'm the man that ensures billions of email messages are being delivered every month.
Re:Oh for crying out loud (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Oh for crying out loud (Score:5, Interesting)
You're right. If you send me a letter, and I show it to my wife, well, you didn't consent to that. Hell, I can show it to the New York Times, and you didn't consent to that, and tough shit to you. Once you send it to me you cannot control who I show it to.
Please stop trying to tell me what I can do with MY email. You sent it to me, so you no longer control it. Stop trying to control me.
Or are you trying to say that gmail users didn't consent to Google having access to their email? Despite the text they saw when they signed up, the contents of the first letter in their inbox, and Google's greatly simplified privacy policy that was all over the news a year ago for months on end? Hell, I applied for this credit card but didn't realize I had to pay it back, pretty please mister judge fix that for me!
Re:Oh for crying out loud (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, you truly have no idea how anti-spam algorithms work. Please read up on bayesian networks. They are used by anti-spam software, and they (or something similar) are used by Google's ad systems.
They are exactly the same system. Exactly.