[wfjackson]

I remember reading somewhere that Google announced that they're now stopping using emails in Apps for Business and Apps for Education for building ad targeting profiles.

Very surprising to know that the paid Google Apps for Business were also being used that way, but this being primarily an ad company, not surprised that they were making misleading and false statements to the public on their web site until they were compelled to explain in federal court, where apparently they couldn't continue lying under the threat of heavy fines or jail time. Only Google knows what other data is being used to track people for showing ads.

I doubt many people are aware that their Android phone's location might be being tracked for monetizing ads.

http://www.datadrivenbusiness.com/google-quietly-testing-off...

I am debating getting a Nest, but all this makes me queasy.

[eitally]

We've been an Apps customer (20,000+ seats) since 2009 and have always been told our content was not scanned or otherwise used for advertising purposes (and of course no ads are displayed, either).

[wfjackson]

From http://googleforwork.blogspot.com/2014/04/protecting-student...

>removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Apps for Education, which means Google cannot collect or use student data in Apps for Education services for advertising purposes.

>We’re also making similar changes for all our Google Apps customers, including Business, Government and for legacy users of the free version, and we’ll provide an update when the rollout is complete.

I believe the data gathered was used to target ads shown in other Google properties, like YouTube, and that Content OneBox was scanning all emails. See this:

>The plaintiffs allege that Google has employed such practices since around 2010, when it began using a new technology, known as Content Onebox, that allows the company to intercept and scan emails before they reach their intended recipients, rather than after messages are delivered to users’ inboxes, regardless of whether ads are turned off.

Looks like the ads checkbox applied to only ads being shown in Apps, not to the data being collected from the emails on the backend to build ad profiles.