Is Google Reading Your Email?

I was under the impression that Gmail messages are encrypted between sender and receiver. Is this incorrect?

I wish they'd read my mail, star the important ones. and delete the rest

Thanks for shining a little light on the real facts regarding this issue. The WSJ sensational expose even made it to mainstream news in my country, which is a very long way from the USA. The information you have provided was obviously too boring to be included.
So thanks for the boring stuff Bob.

I guess no one here has knowledge of traffic analysis. Modern computers can do very well at getting useful information from extremely large amounts of data. This was a part, and a less well known, invention of Gordan Welshman and others at Bletchley Park, c. 1941-2. It continues to be a massive part of what's done at GCHQ. It's now known as metadata analysis.

I know they do because that's how they sync up my Google Calendar. It's nice not having to enter in my flight info onto the calendar for my upcoming Southwest Flights. "Free" seems to always come with a price...

To explore the sequence of events that might take place with some machine reading anonymized emails.

Let's say I email someone about the "Kill Bill" movie. That email gets stripped of the routing information -- but gets read, and flagged, by some process. The alarms go off -- and it gets reported to the powers-in-charge. They run off to some judge and get a warrant to read all my emails.

No big problem to match the body of my email with all the ones spinning on disks, until they find the one I sent. Now that one, thru the routing info, does identify me, and then every email I've sent is turned over to the authorities.

But, I use Gmail because I have had experiences in the past with my ISP, with their mail servers, reading and silently dumping emails I sent when they thought there was something bad in them.

I'm just going to throw out some numbers based on your rant. Since I may get 50 e-mails a day, mostly junk, a few might reveal that my cousins and I are having a family reunion. What are the mathematical chances that someone would read mine (all 50) or luck out on the meaty ONE about where we will stay? I cannot imagine that there is a line of employees somewhere saying to the others, "Hey, you've got to hear this e-mail. They're going to eat at the Black Pelican!" On the other hand, it might be serious information, but that could be hacked anyway. Where's my outrage at Google and those other snoops? I think I lost my feelings of privacy when my mailbox was pilfered in front of my house.

The developers needed real emails?
Rubbish.
They can send their own email messages.
They do not need to use other people's messages.
Something smells here.

I am OUTRAGED!!!
that people can be bothered being outraged by this.

Have a good day Bob

PS please note I used Three(3) exclamation marks!

I AGREE WITH FRED, LET THE $%#3@$#9((5's write e-mails to each other to read?????????????????
LOL!!!!!!!!

Let 'em read my emails. Besides being horribly bored, once in a while I pass along great jokes and such that would liven up their day. If I really thought they were scrutinizing my writings, then I will oblige them with stuff to make their heads spin....

I don't like or trust Google but this seems almost pure paranoia.

So how do we stop google spying on us?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Did you read the article, or just the headline?

Hey Bob - it's not just in the tech niche... The amount of non-news has been steadily increasing across the board, over the past few years. Obviously, there's no shame in raking in ill-gotten-clicks for payola. Some of us make a game of it; honing our skills to discern which links will likely take us to fluff and which will lead to actual substance. But, it takes a lot of practice and a sharp eye, to get through the day without landing on drivel.

If Google isn't reading your emails then their software is incredibly adept at guessing which ones are spam.

It's never a good idea to use email to send information that could be harmful if intercepted. And even if you're on a service like Proton Mail it won't help if the receiver is using a non-encrypted email service.

If a service is free then the user is the commodity.

Could somebody post a simple list of things to do to protect your privacy on gMail? There is a bewildering list of choices when you click on "Advanced Settings" and go through the list under "Privacy and Security". Where is the setting (if any) that prevents app developers from sifting through your email? And does this apply to all browsers or only if you're using Chrome, for instance?

I learned way back at the end of the 80's never to say,visit, or send anything over the company walkie-talkie, computer or phone that you wouldn't want the world to know. I've been using my private communication devices since '99' and I still feel the same way about electronic communication. I have had that idea reinforced quite a few times by reading the articles and comments from the 'Ask Bob'weekley. Thanks Bob!

I recently caught my email provider snooping in my emails so a better title would be, "Is Google the Only One Reading Your Email?"

I remember the founder of Sun Microsystems saying many years ago that we no longer had privacy and to get over it. My rule of thumb for e-mail, is I don't push the send button unless I'm willing to see the content of my e-mail in a court deposition. So if Google is actually reading my e-mail, like another poster said, they will be bored. BTW, my work requires using databases that have a lot of confidential content so we use a VPN and encryption. Haven't' ever been hacked, but nothing is hacker-proof.

ProtonMail in Switzerland is the most secure email. It is encrypted of course !
NEVER trust any American program !

big brother is always watching!!!