However today the "friend" of mine who I'm not speaking to (
) sent out a link to an APNew article about the possible security risks of the service and how she won't be responding to anyone who get's a google account (you don't know how much I felt like getting one 
)
Anyway, the article: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040407/D81PUR3G0.html
I'm not too much of a slouch when it comes to security or privacy concerns, I've played it smart and followed most of the rules I guess.... but when I had read about the new Google service I figured it sounded no worse than Yahoo's banners they tack to every message.
On top of that, wasn't there the big issue about e-mail not being considered a secure form of communication anyway? Going back to EBBSes I remember most of the systems posting notices to that effect. And E-mail doesn't travel encrypted anyway, it's open text transmitted for all to see. All I have to do is run a server that bounces the e-mail through it and I can potentially read every bit of text that is sent across the line (correct me if I'm wrong on the technical aspect, the legal/ethical issues with doing that are something alltogether different).
It seems there are 2 issue here:
1) Google will be scanning all the e-mails for the information to display ads on. Computers will scan for keywords, just as many do now for Spam and virus protection. The ads themselves are supposed to (from the description I read) appear on the GMail owners screen next to the message much as the text boxes appear next to searches on Google do now. Other than a computer reading the mail, I'm not sure why this is an issue, but it appears to be the case. (and not nearly as bad as the thing Microsoft was talking about doing with it's linking HTML files to keywords, did they ever abandon that or is it just an option in the off position?)
2) Google's servers may contain residual data even if you delete the message. This is understandable since Google is going to use it's own search engine to allow you to search your emails. But anyone who thinks that when they delete that message from Yahoo, that the data is all gone, has another thing comming. I'm sure that no-one's doing any more work at removing data than any normal home user is, the sectors aren't being wiped for the deleted files.... sounds like hype to me.
Am I being naive? Am I missing something?
I'm not sure that I'll be dropping my Yahoo account anytime soon for a Google account, but it sounded like a pretty good service, and the relevant text ads sure beat the "remorgage your home now" ads that I have to slog through on Yahoo (actually, my "Adblock" on Firebird works pretty good at removing most of those ads
).
).
