Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
As for "going through my mail", my primary email account is Gmail. My mail resides on Google's servers. I established a Gmail account back when it was still in invitational beta status, because a fellow member of a mailing list I was on worked for Google at the time and was handing out invites. I happily took one. Another list member was balking because <gasp> Google could read her mail. The chap offering invites simply explained that the things that read her mail were search algorithms looking for keywords so Gmail could offer hopefully relevant ads for things that might be of interest. I carefully bit my tongue and did not say "Assuming they could, why should a human being at Google bother to read your mail? Who are you? What makes your mail of any particular interest?" (The real answers to those questions would be "nobody" and "nothing".)
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Hey Dennis,
I think you're asking the wrong questions. The question should be, "Why is a human being or an algorithm reading/scanning my mail in the first place?"
And you're sticking with the 'you're not important enough to spy on' argument. What is that? That's not even an argument. Should only "important" people be accorded privacy?
And what makes my mail of any particular interest?
$
Why else do you think they're doing it? Like they're really curious.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
And I've never considered email secure, and as a rule, I generally don't say things in email that would give me heartburn if they were seen by someone other than the intended recipient. Should you happen to be able to read my mail, have fun. Unless you are me, you will be mystified or terminally bored.
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So that's you. Other people don't feel that way. Other people may want to say things they don't want people combing through.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I generally advise people to think about what privacy they need, and what steps to take to get it.
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So that's your solution--the big companies can do anything they want with your data and it's up to you to fend them off? Not much of a solution. And that would mean that anyone using the internet would have to be a security expert.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
To be really private, you disconnect your computer from the Internet and don't go online. That's a higher price than most folks are willing to pay.
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That's a price
no one should have to pay. You know, what is the internet? Yeah, it's computers and codes and algorithms. It's fast and anonymous and a great information source. Yeah, it's all that, but the bottom line is: it's still people. And people (in civilized society anyway) have expectations for what is fair and so they make rules so that anyone that is not inclined to play by the rules will be stopped.
People lose sight of that. A lot of (unthinking) people act like the internet is this thing that is beyond the human realm. It's not. People are hitting all those keystrokes that are making the algorithms that spy on your mail. And people are making those decisions to spy on your mail.
And people can make the rules (and laws) to stop that spying (and all the other unfair things happening on the internet).
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Dennis[/QUOTE]