Am I paranoid or?

[gordo]

I clicked the "Send" tab on an email and up popped this warning:



It appears that Google had parsed the content of my email and determined that I hadn't actually uploaded the attachment. I know it parses emails to gather info to customize its ads but thats not what this is. What other info from my emails is Google gathering?

Best gordo

[mattbeals]

They've been doing this for a while. They said it was something to do with being a user friendly feature. Personally, I don't want them reading my emails so I don't use their service except for junk mail. Sounds paranoid but you can't trust Google because of this type of function. And Facebook even less. I thought the NSA and FBI were bad. But Facebook is the worst. Google, not second and certainly not last.

[zoran]

It's a feature designed to help users.
It was a "lab" feature for awhile and you could use it or not, maybe they finally included it to be part of the regular mail for everyone.
I think it might be helpful for people who miss attachments, which happens very often, at least in my neck of woods.

I hope you are aware that human being is not reading your e-mail and it's done by google software.
Google is big brother for sure and even though I use it as my primary e-mail, I am aware that no mater which service you use, you will be watched if they want to.

[Servicetech]

Very few E-mail services over the internet are even a little bit secure. If you don't want the content of your E-mail read by at least a machine, then it should not be sent in an E-mail over the internet.

[bprint_tampabay]

Any illusion of privacy has long been debunked.

Everything is out there, regardless of what service you are using.

If you want privacy don't go online. Period. Or use a cell phone.

Gordo is spot on. Big Brother is watching.

[Rick]

I really wish you had warned me earlier.

signed,
Congressman Anthony Weiner

[bprint_tampabay]

Anthony, Anthony, Anthony

Ya should have known.

Sincerely, George Orwell

[Alith7]

As my hubby and I frequently talk about, Big Brother IS watching. nothing you can do about it. either get over it, or go live in the mountains with no power, no gadgets, and no connection with the outside world. On second thought, they'd probably still watch by satellite just to see why you moved to the middle of no where.

[Mike F]

As my hubby and I frequently talk about, Big Brother IS watching. nothing you can do about it. either get over it, or go live in the mountains with no power, no gadgets, and no connection with the outside world. On second thought, they'd probably still watch by satellite just to see why you moved to the middle of no where.

That about sums it up. Personally I keep a piece of electrical tape over my laptop camera, with a piece of paper in the middle so the adhesive doesn't get on the lens for when I occasionally use it. I also disable the microphone array when I'm not using it. I'd rather be paranoid than ignorant.

[Toweri]

The similar feature has been implemented on e.g. Thunderbird email application. When it detects word "attach*" on the body text, it will pop up a prompt at the bottom of the window with option to add attachment.
This kind of off-line feature, where no outsider is parsing my emails, is quite helpful.

On the paranoia department: Recently Sweden passed a law allowing their intelligence department to scan any Internet traffic passing the country's borders.
Maybe it's okay with them (actually, it is not.) but as the international Internet backbone from Finland to the European Central Node also goes through Sweden, they also took the liberty to scan all finnish Internet traffic too!!

So much for national sovereignity...