Why Is Google Scanning My E-Mail? – ‘The Why’

Welcome to the newest edition of The Why.

Everywhere you look the media is pushing you telling you who to follow, what to watch and when to watch it.   You’re even sometimes told how to do it all.  Truth is, here at American Live Wire we do a bit of that too.  The big difference is we also tell you why.

You ask the questions.  We provide the answers.

“Why is Google scanning my e-mail?”you ask?

Good question. But first let’s review a bit. Google doesn’t charge for their accounts but they still collect their pay, boys and girls. They get their money in the form of huge quantities of personal data about the estimated 500-plus million folks who use the “free” service.

Why does Google scan my e-mail? / Image: BlogGoldstoneWP

Google also doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation regarding personal privacy either. G-mail specifically is facing numerous privacy lawsuits in the US and Europe as this is being written in fact. Some of these cases involve “illegal wiretapping for scanning the content of e-mails.”

Why is Google scanning my e-mail? Short answer? For the money. In the last quarter of 2013 alone they raked in $16.86 billion in revenues. One source of income is derived from automatically scanning and indexing Gmail messages and using the retrieved information to show its users ads that are relevant to them.

Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California, said: “The basic premise of Gmail is, we’ll give you a robust e-mail service and in exchange we want to display ads alongside our e-mail and we’re scanning your e-mail to decide what ads are most relevant.”

Not to belabor the point but for the curious, Gmail scans for keywords that ID subjects of discussion based on things like context and frequency then they match your e-mail with related advertisements. The information (as well as data from searches, map use and Google+) is also used to create comprehensive user profiles for what is called “future ad targeting.

Why is Google scanning my e-mail? They are doing it because all the major free e-mail providers such as Yahoo and Microsoft Outlook also benefit from their supposedly free services. They post general or even targeted ads, create user bases for other products and services and brand recognition.

Why is Google scanning my e-mail? They are doing it because it has led to a successful way of generating targeted advertisements from user data and this has turned into what’s called a “primary business model” for a lot of tech companies.

Why does Google scan my e-mail? / Image: BlogArticles

Why is Google scanning my e-mail? They are doing it because legally they can. All they have to do is let you know they are doing so by putting it out there in rather lengthy, uninspired and reader-unfriendly terms and conditions and privacy policies that people rarely even glance at before clicking on “agree.”

Why is Google scanning my e-mail? Google reps claim they scan your e-mail to reduce the amount of “malicious e-mails and spam” you receive. They also say they do it for features like “Priority Inbox and the tabbed view that filters e-mails into different categories.” They also claim it is done by a computer and not by Google employees who might have even less of a life than you do in the real world.

Why is Google scanning my e-mail? Now you know.

You ask the questions.  We provide the answers.

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