[meanderer]

Building profiles of senders can be necessary, e.g., for detecting spammer accounts.

Also, email is transmitted in plain text. Sending an email is more like shouting to your friends in the street, rather than putting a letter into an envelope mailed to the recipient. Thus, I don't think an explicit consent is needed.

That said, I understand that fair use of such information is a concern.

[netheril96]

> Also, email is transmitted in plain text. Sending an email is more like shouting to your friends in the street, rather than putting a letter into an envelope mailed to the recipient. Thus, I don't think an explicit consent is needed.

These days Gmail will transfer your email protected by TLS if possible. Not shouting at all.

[morganvachon]

Exactly. Google seems to be of two minds about privacy. They want to show that they protect your information from the rest of the world, but they expect 100% knowledge of your information in return, so they can sell it to their advertisers. I get that that's their business model, which is why I dropped them completely in favor of paid services that don't sell my information.