Tuesday, April 06, 2004
BBC NEWS | Business | Google's Gmail sparks privacy row
Plenty of people are unhappy with Google's plans for a new free email system to rival the likes of Hotmail. The main objection is to Google's plan to store all email sent & received for an indefinite amount of time, and to use the contents of that email to decide what advertisements to send your way. This is worrying stuff, and people should be concerned.
This is just one example of how pervasive and ubiquitious technology, which tries to help us out with our everyday tasks, has to know a lot about us and what we're up. Who is responsible for that data once it has been generated? How can we keep tabs on what different systems know about us? if we want technology to be more helpful and useful, we have to sacrifice some of our privacy, but there are important questions to be asked about how best to manage that process. I for one had signed up Google's email, eager to test it out. But I won't bother now, since I strongly object to their blanket opt-out approach. Will they still offer a service to people who don't want their email to be kept on file and scrutinised for advertising purposes? maybe Google will find that its ad filtering system is recommending a lot of banners for "alternative email providers"...
Plenty of people are unhappy with Google's plans for a new free email system to rival the likes of Hotmail. The main objection is to Google's plan to store all email sent & received for an indefinite amount of time, and to use the contents of that email to decide what advertisements to send your way. This is worrying stuff, and people should be concerned.
This is just one example of how pervasive and ubiquitious technology, which tries to help us out with our everyday tasks, has to know a lot about us and what we're up. Who is responsible for that data once it has been generated? How can we keep tabs on what different systems know about us? if we want technology to be more helpful and useful, we have to sacrifice some of our privacy, but there are important questions to be asked about how best to manage that process. I for one had signed up Google's email, eager to test it out. But I won't bother now, since I strongly object to their blanket opt-out approach. Will they still offer a service to people who don't want their email to be kept on file and scrutinised for advertising purposes? maybe Google will find that its ad filtering system is recommending a lot of banners for "alternative email providers"...
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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