O.T. Gmail may have privacy concerns.

[Yvsa]

Just read about this on another forum so I Googled it and found THIS. Check out some of the websites and make up your own mind.
I use my gmail for family mail mostly so I'm not too worried but I do think I will start trashing some of it just too be on the safe side.:grumpy:

 

[Green Ice]

Great. I've done nothing illegal and have nothing to hide will stop using gmail and google just on general principles.

Ice

 

[Josh Feltman]

Yvsa, if they haven't locked me up yet, I figure you're safe

 

[Jebadiah_Smith]

Its okay guys, that tsunami will kill us in 2007 and then we wont have to worry about gmail.

 

[Tohatchi NM]

Money and power corrupt. Absolute money and power corrupt absolutely.

The thing that most aggravates me is that you have to make such things a very time-consuming hobby to even be aware of them. I consider myself fairly tech-savy, and I read all of the user agreements for stuff I sign up for. What about people just venturing onto the web who are either unaware or consider it standard operating procedure? When I'm 80, and I going to be preaching to my grandkids about privacy, and having them nod their heads, all the while thinking that it's the quaint, crazy ramblings of some old coot from a dead age?

Time to fire up my own web server, encrypt everything with a 1012-bit key and start paying cash, even if I have to drive to Reno and hand Yangdu the khuk money personally, paying tolls all the way because I don't want the radio-operated "Speedpass" tags to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.

I thought a founding principle of this country was that the government doesn't have any business in your business unless you're doing something wrong??????

 

[FallingKnife]

The biggest risks to your email privacy probably have nothing to do with Gmail. E.g.:
- you mistype an address
- a recipient forwards it
- a recipient has a really bad password
- some other screwup or malfunction

Lower risk, but universal:
- Someone suing or .gov CAN demand access to your email (unless it's attorney-client or otherwise priviledged)
- email wanders around the internet plain-text, meaning that anyone with a "sniffer" connected to a network between you and them can see it. (A sniffer is often used by techies to detect and diagnose network problems. Which is another way of saying snooping.)

It's not too unusual for me to recieve personal messages not intended for me. Fortunately it's usually silly stuff like coordinating where to meet for lunch. (But then there's the occasional lawyer in Nigeria trying to find the heir to a fortune.) I've even done it myself.

Do NOT put anything you want private in any email.

 

[FallingKnife]

In the screwup department, I've seen so-called HR managers email a phone list to the entire company. The list had name, location, phone extension.

And bank account info and social security number and salary.

 

[jw556]

"Why are you worried about someone getting your social security number?"

That question is high on my list of pet peeves, right up there with "Why do you always carry a knife?" and "Is that thing real?"

 

[gajinoz]

"Is that thing real?"

I've had quite a few girls say that when ........ ahh.. er ... never mind.

The way I look at it, anyone who transmits anything via the net and doesn't expect it to become public knowledge sooner or later is severely kidding themselves. Online banking and such is probably as resonably secure as anything else but it's a calculated risk. I've always regarded emails as public domain. I'm certainly not going to be transmitting my plans to take over the world through gmail, or any other email system.

 

[FallingKnife]

Online banking and such is probably as resonably secure as anything else but it's a calculated risk.

I've had a bank debit card comprimised. The bank detected it and the transactions never hit my statement. The funny thing is that I had NEVER EVER used that card a) on the internets b) on any other vendors. The ONLYest place I had use it was on that bank's ATM's. Inside job?

Many retailers have LAN's. They connect their cash registers and such together and send credit card and other info over their local area network. Many have connections to the internet, to access suppliers, banks, etc. Because they only sell in person, they might not think of themselves as "internet" businesses. Because of this, they don't worry their pretty little heads over security, but they might have a server that holds customer credit card and other data connected directly to the internet.

There's your real risk.

 

[Khukuri Monster]

The Internet in general has privacy concerns. Most of these privacy concerns have nothing to do with the cryptography and protocols underlying the Internet, and more to do with people who are willing to give away their personal information.