After setting up my gmail account yesterday, I did some reading around on the net, and found some interesting information, which is all collected in the Gmail wiki. People seem to be concerned about the fact that google’s computers can scan your emails and target ads to you, and also that they discourage emails from being deleted. Their line of thought is that with 1Gb of email storage, who needs to delete anything? Other people are concerned that deleting a message from Gmail does not actually delete it, and that google can use the information in your email archive to find out more about you. Quite what they may use this information for is not clear at the moment. You can find links in the wiki to other arcticles which explains other people’s concerns.
My personal take on it is that if you have something to hide, you shouldn’t be using email for it anyway, let alone a web-based email account. There are plenty of other ways of communicating with people other than email, use one of those methods instead.
Having said all that, I have four Gmail invites to give away. If anyone wants one, let me know.
Gmail thoughts
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#1 by Cal at September 2nd, 2004
Gmail seems to be all the rage from reading other people’s blogs – I don’t really know what the advantages are, so maybe having one would be a waste for me if there are other people who know why they want one. If not, I’d love one!