Curiosity

[lnr]

[Poll #872554]

Feel free to answer anonymously in comments if you don't have a livejournal, or don't want me to know your answers. I don't log IPs.

Comments

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

I'm total agnostic. Gmail has, at best, no impact on any part of my life.
Is there any reason I should consider Gmail evil?
Can anyone enlighten me?

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Because they use it to target advertising, and admit to this.

Unlike other web mail services that do this and don't admit it, or just scattershot.

TBH if I were worried about what could be done with my email I'd encrypt everying, who knows what those intermediate MTAs might get up to, and none of them send me a EULA before forwarding my stuff.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Oh. Right. Thanks.

I'm still agnostic, then, as I can't really see a problem, as long as they are open about it. I might not chose to use it, but that doesn't make it evil.

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

Some fear that their privacy policy is such that they could easily do rather more than targeting advertising if they so chose. (I've not read it myself and IANAL.)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I use it a lot (my non-gmail addresses are currently forwarded there, after a laptop crisis that took out my normal mail reader and archives, and a few weeks of swapping machines/HDDs). The advertising to date has divided neatly into "ooh, that's actually quite interesting", "ha ha, that's really funny" and "was there advertising? I didn't notice". I haven't bought anything from it, but then I never do when I use Google either. I have followed some links to interesting news stories, though.