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Google Reads Your Mails?!!

I still like Gmail for its features and convenience but when it comes to security and privacy issues, there are major concerns…

It reads all your mails!!! In order to generate ad-based revenues, they scan the text of all incoming messages and place targeted ads, which can be seen at the right sidebar of the mail screen!!

In response to the criticism of privacy advocates, they respond by saying “we’re nice, trust us” or point to the company’s mission statement of “do no evil.” Is this the price we should pay for using some free web service?? are we ready to put our privacy at stake for 6 GB free space!!

If this doesn’t scare you, consider the company’s confused retention policy: “Google has not set specific, finite limits on how long it will retain user account, email, and transactional data. And Google has not set clear written policies about its data sharing between business units.”

Google’s cookie is an index for all your searches, and sits alongside an Orkut cookie that tells Google exactly who you are. The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the services. How about this, “Google has all our data even after we delete it from our mailbox or even after we terminate our account!!” They might create large repositories of personal data that could possibly be shared inappropriately.

Here is how Google puts it

Google processes personal information on our servers in the United States of America and in other countries. In some cases, we process personal information on a server outside your own country. We may process personal information to provide our own services. In some cases, we may process personal information on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party, such as our advertising partners.

HERE is the letter sent by privacy groups to Google’s cofounders which says,

1. First, Google must suspend its implementation of scanning the full text of emails for determining ad placement.

2. Second, Google must clarify its information retention and data correlation policy amongst its business units, partners, and affiliates. This means that Google must set clear data retention and deletion dates and establish detailed written policies about data sharing and correlation amongst its business units and partners.

So, the next time when you the services of Google, Think before you act!!

Festival of Colors-Holi

Happy Holi Everyone!!

Google

Yeah.. The word that touches our lives everyday!! Much of what I know today is the contribution of Google. Apart from the search engine; Gmail has lots and lots of features… Some of them which I use and like the most is:

• If you’ve got Gmail, You’ll never need to open any of your other mails: It will fetch all other mails to the Gmail account!! Just go to Settings–>Accounts–>Get mail from other accounts

• I REPEAT (If you’ve got Gmail, You’ll never need to open any of your other mails): You can use gmail to send mails using any of your email ids (yahoo, msn etc..)

• Invisible in Gtalk: Everyone (whoever uses it) is aware of the invisible feature (recently introduced) in Gtalk.

and Finally, Never worry if someone’s got the (dot) at the wrong place in the mail id.. i.e. if you send mail to larry.page@gmail.com or larrypage@gmail.com (or any other combination), it gets delivered to the intended recipient. Gmail doesn’t care about the little . dot

What School Never Taught ME

Just another guy distressed by the schooling system; wondering why don’t they teach things that apply to the real world!!

Before you continue, have a look HERE because thats what I did before writing the post..

Since the day I left school, I always wondered why can’t I apply the learning in the real world; After a lot of research I discovered they don’t teach anything worth it… Real world applications require no formal schooling or the big theorems which I learnt after taking so much of troubles..

Now I better understand what Mark Twain meant when he said:

“I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

Successful Blog or a Money Making one..

John: Mark is a successful blogger, He gets more than 10K hits everyday…

James: Really!! How much money does he make from it??

John: Come on.. Being successful is different from money making!!

Do the words of John reflect a great thought.. Yes indeed!!

Success always doesn’t point to money rather it may mean internal happiness that surpasses all other things. Though the words above are applicable everywhere, I’ll restrict my discussion to the blogs…

The other day I was quite annoyed while reading an article.. It had ads all over it which was so distracting that I had to quit reading… after a glimpse of couple of more stuff there, I came to know that the blog doesn’t get even 100 hits a day and moreover the author says: “I write because I am passionate about it!!”

What kind of passion is it?? (I asked more to myself then anyone else) Won’t it be far better if the reader goes through the whole thing and appreciate the writing style, the thought or the issue it raised… As I said, it all depends on the user what he wants from the blog, but does it not do injustice to the ppl reading it!!

I understand if some professional site (like dictionary.com) does it because they put their efforts for the benefit of those using it, but when I say I am passionate about writing and ppl should appreciate what I do and the way I do it, shouldn’t I let them go through it without distractions??!!

p.s. Having said all this, I am not against advertisements or those putting it on their sites. I just pondered over it from my point of view. So, as they say, “Viewer’s Discretion is Advised!”