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by Ecio78 5252 days ago
they already mine your email to show ads to you, they already do everything he talks about, they're just now going to let you have access to it through search instead of having to go to mail/reader/youtube/etc individually

Uhm ok tell me if you like this scenario:

* I'm fed up of my employeer so I'm sending tons of jobs applications from my personal gmail account

* I dont write these mails while at work, but sometimes I login on google services for doin some work-related stuff (let's say use keyword search tools)

* I forgot to logout

* I start searching stuff on the net with my chief for our vmware project and instantly google suggests me as a perfect match my application letter sent to vmware HR

* Thank you google I'm almost fired :)

of course in this case I should've logged out from google, but I'd prefer to possibly opt-out this kind of stuff...

2 comments

What you are scared of is some hypothetical situation that there so-far is no evidence it could or would happen in the future? When you do web searches, your personal emails start popping up within the results? That actually happens, or is going to happen? When?
Relevant ads outed a gay teen on Facebook: http://unicornbooty.com/blog/2012/01/11/gay-teen-inadvertent...

Maybe not widespread, but definitely not entirely hypothetical.

I'm not sure what this has to do with my question. What you linked to has nothing to do with either Google or email.
>What you are scared of is some hypothetical situation that there so-far is no evidence it could happen

Ecio78 outlined a scenario in which relevance targeting "outed" him in a way he didn't want. I'm analogizing Facebook relevance ads with Gmail and search ads.

I didn't think Ecio78 was saying that emails are going to pop up explictly, only that Google would present information that is relevant to him in a situation where he didn't want that relevant information.

> of course in this case I should've logged out from google

Yes, exactly, what is to stop anyone from just going through your sent mail if they were already willing to go through your web history?

I believe he was saying he would not have accessed his email on his work computer at all, he would then log into Google for other reasons and not open his mail. But Google would then go ahead and show him something related to his email account that he did not want.

Leaving his computer logged into his Google account and his employer sitting down to go through the account, such as sent mail, is a different matter.

The solution to all this is to never use personal logins for anything on a computer you do not control 100%.

Yes exactly, thanks talmand for the clarification, i was thinking about the case in which the user is not logged in the mail but google fetches data for your search from all your personal data just because you're logged on.