GMail (Google Mail)

[Floris]

Or as a nice account to store your vacation images on and retreive them when you get home.

[Francisco]

Gmail Screenshots

Check 'em out...

Gmail News: Gmail Screenshots Surface

[Floris]

Cool, thank you for sharing

[colicab-d]

Sorry i dont see the fuss over this, its just a webmail service

[Francisco]

Sorry i dont see the fuss over this, its just a webmail service

Well, its google, and its got 1GB of storage...

[Chris Gwynne]

From somewhere...

A new Google email service that stores messages where users cannot delete them may violate Europe's privacy laws, a citizens' group has said after lodging a complaint with UK authorities.

The world's most popular Internet search engine said last week it would offer a free email service, called "Gmail", with one gigabyte of free storage capacity -- more than 100 times that offered by established rivals Yahoo Mail and Microsoft's MSN Hotmail.

But the breakthrough comes at the price of less privacy.

"Residual copies of email may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account," Google's Gmail says in its privacy and terms of use sections.

Google will also scan users' emails in order to paste appropriate advertising into messages. It may also link together "cookies", which contain personal information, from both email and Web use records.

"This is not just 'buyer beware'. Consumers should be aware that there's a vast violation of European law occurring here," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, a citizens' group with offices in Britain and the United States.

Europe's privacy protection laws are much stricter than those in the United States, where Google is based. European consumers, for example, have the right to retain control over their communications.

"If a person deletes an email, he should be confident that email is actually deleted," said Maurice Westerling, co-founder of Bits of Freedom, another privacy interest group, based in the Netherlands.

"Besides, Google cannot just open emails. Communication in Europe has a very high degree of protection."

Google said it would not assign people to scan the content of emails, but would automate the task with computers.

"No humans read your email to target the ads," it said on its Web site.

The office of the British Information Commissioner Officer Richard Thomas had no immediate comment on the complaint, filed by Privacy International early on Monday to request an investigation of the new service.

Google, which also faced criticism from US-based privacy groups, could not immediately comment on whether it would adjust the terms of use.

The company has often received high marks from consumer groups for putting users ahead of commercial interests, for instance by limiting advertising and blocking pop-up windows.

Privacy groups said they were also concerned about Google's ability to link a user's personal details, supplied in the Gmail registration process, to Web-surfing behaviour through the use of a single cookie for its search and mail services.

"This linkage provides the most comprehensive understanding to date of a person's life," said Davies, adding governments would be tempted to access that information.

Privacy advocates gave differing views on whether European consumers would be able to waive their rights in order to use the Google service.

"If the consumer is aware of the terms of service, that counts as a private agreement between the two parties. We would not consider it unsolicited communications," said Steve Linford, founder of anti-spam group Spamhaus Project.

Government-backed privacy agencies in Sweden and Germany, however, have blocked commercial services because personal information required in order to sign up would be stored on US-based computers.

"These providers can't just do as they please and hide behind a contract," Privacy International's Davies said.

Gmail's rival services Yahoo Mail and MSN Hotmail, with tens of millions of users worldwide, also have far-reaching user terms, allowing the companies to make use of information put on their Web sites by consumers.

Yahoo explicitly says it will delete any emails or other information after an account is closed.

[Chris Gwynne]

Not an overly great design, but then again when have Google ever done that?

If and when it does become public I think I'll switch GMail to my main email.

[Dean C]

I mean google always goes for simplicity and who wouldn't considering how much bandwidth they use but there's a difference between simplicity and good simple design - that is just plain ugly

[Wayne Luke]

Threads merged. We only need one thread on this.

[Chen]

"Residual copies of email may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account," Google's Gmail says in its privacy and terms of use sections.

Google will also scan users' emails in order to paste appropriate advertising into messages. It may also link together "cookies", which contain personal information, from both email and Web use records.

"This is not just 'buyer beware'. Consumers should be aware that there's a vast violation of European law occurring here," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, a citizens' group with offices in Britain and the United States.

Europe's privacy protection laws are much stricter than those in the United States, where Google is based. European consumers, for example, have the right to retain control over their communications.

"If a person deletes an email, he should be confident that email is actually deleted," said Maurice Westerling, co-founder of Bits of Freedom, another privacy interest group, based in the Netherlands.

If I delete any of my posts on this forum, it wouldn't really be deleted and still stay in the database. So is vBulletin also violating European laws?

[Chris Gwynne]

If I delete any of my posts on this forum, it wouldn't really be deleted and still stay in the database. So is vBulletin also violating European laws?

For one, it's not my quote Chen. It's off CNN, the views of privacy groups.

Secondly, no doubt by using a public forum you assumed the risk of having your posts displayed and to be read by anyone. Email is a private thing where no such risks are in practice, so your argument is both null and void.

[Dean C]

So is yours Chris - you think google won't have a clear-cut and carefully worded privacy policy that must be readable prior to signing up for an account? It'll obviously highlight that the emails are held in a spiderable database etc..

[lucky_voyager]

Google sucks!

[cirisme]

For one, it's not my quote Chen. It's off CNN, the views of privacy groups.

Secondly, no doubt by using a public forum you assumed the risk of having your posts displayed and to be read by anyone. Email is a private thing where no such risks are in practice, so your argument is both null and void.

Email is private? It is no such thing!

It is as private as a postcard. If you're concerned about your privacy use PGP.

BTW, the Google File System is pretty interesting. Data is stored in large clusters and never actually deleted until many clusters are marked as "deleted"...to prevent excessive fragmentation.

This is similar(though not exactly) to every other file system on the planet. Do you really think M$ and Yahoo actually immediately hard delete your files? Indeed they aren't going to be gone from all the caches, soft deletions and backups, Google is simply being upfront about the things behind the scenes. if you're uncomfortable with that, use something else.

[Chris Gwynne]

So is yours Chris - you think google won't have a clear-cut and carefully worded privacy policy that must be readable prior to signing up for an account? It'll obviously highlight that the emails are held in a spiderable database etc..

Dean maybe you should read before you write? As I said already, the text is not my argument, I have no opinions as to privacy with GMail. I couldn't give a crap to be honest.

cirisme, read what I just said to Dean. =)