While it is true that no electronic communications are secure, it is not fair to compare what Yahoo does with personal information to the scandal associated with gmail. For example:
"...First, Google has proposed scanning the text of all incoming emails for ad placement. The scanning of confidential email violates the implicit trust of an email service provider. Further, the unlimited period for data retention poses unnecessary risks of misuse.
Second, Google's overall data retention and correlation policies are problematic in their lack of clarity and broad scope. 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.
Third, the Gmail system sets potentially dangerous precedents and establishes reduced expectations of privacy in email communications. These precedents may be adopted by other companies and governments and may persist long after Google is gone..."
"...Currently, individuals may have the understanding that Googles system is not that different in nature from scanning messages for spam, which is a common practice today. There is a fundamental difference, however. With Gmail, individuals incoming emails will be scanned and seeded with ads. This will happen every time Gmail subscribers open their emails to re-read them, no matter how long they have been stored. Inserting new content from third party advertisers in incoming emails is fundamentally different than removing harmful viruses and unwanted spam.
Another potential misconception about the Gmail system is that the scanning will take place in isolation. The email is scanned, and ad text is delivered. But that is not the end of the story. The delivery of the ad text based on emails is a continual "on the fly" stream. This technology requires a substantial supply chain of directory structures, databases, logs, and a long memory. Auditing trails of the ad text are kept, and the data could be correlated with the data Google collects via its other business units such as its search site and its networking site, Orkut..."
"...Google needs to realize that many different companies and even governments can and likely will walk through the email scanning door once it is opened. As people become accustomed to the notion that email scanning for ad delivery is acceptable, "mission creep" is a real possibility. Other companies and governments may have very different ideas about data correlation than Google does, and may have different motivations for scanning the body of email messages. Google itself, in the absence of clear written promises and policies, may experience a change of course and choose to profit from its large stores of consumer data culled from private communications.
The lowered expectations of email privacy that Google's system has the potential to create is no small matter. Once an information architecture is built, it functions much like a building -- that building may be used by many different owners, and its blueprints may be replicated in many other places.
Google's technology is proprietary, but the precedents it sets are not."
http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm
