North American Network Operators Group
Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

"scanning" e-mail [WAS: 3 Free Gmail invites]

  • From: Patrick W Gilmore
  • Date: Thu Aug 19 13:58:12 2004 
On Aug 19, 2004, at 1:39 PM, Lou Katz wrote:


On Wed, Aug 18, 2004 at 10:13:29PM -0700, Jonathan Nichols wrote:

Joshua Brady wrote:
I've got 2 Gmail invites up for grabs for the first 2 to email me offlist.

You know, I'm having trouble finding people that *don't* have gmail.com
accounts already. :P
Because G-mail scans INCOMING mail without the sender's consent, we will NEVER
have a G-mail account and have considered blocking them. We actively discourage
our clients from using this service. If you want to let a service scan YOUR mail,
it is your perogative, but you cannot give them permission to scan MY mail to you.
I believe your last statement is factually incorrect. I absolutely _can_ do anything I please with "your" e-mail you send to me. Not only that, I also believe I _may_ do it. You send me e-mail, the e-mail is now mine. I can post it publicly, put it into a search engine, or deleted it, and you have no say in the matter. Might not be polite, but it certainly it not illegal. Don't like it, don't send me e-mail. (Please. :)

Google is simply indexing mail for their users as a service - an unobtrusive, completely benign service just like virus checking or procmail scripts which have been used for years. And it certainly does not require the consent of the sender. How I manage my mailbox is MY business. You have exactly zero say over whether I let Google do it or Mail.app.

Perhaps you are worried that Google will read your e-mail? Or maybe let others read it? Well, I hope you never send e-mail to anyone who does not run their own dedicated mail server on their own dedicated hardware and encrypt the SMTP session. 'Cause you are worried about something that has been happening for decades. (Plus I think you have to be more than a little arrogant to think anyone at Google gives a fart about the e-mail you send.)

But hey, it's your e-mail, send it or not as you please. I like the idea behind G-mail, I just can't deal with a web-based e-mail client. You don't, then don't use it.

Just please don't spout factual fallacies like saying I can't give someone permission to do things to my inbox.

--
TTFn,
patrick