The new privacy policies imposed by Apple the apps have somehow served to reveal how much Google knows about us through Gmail.
We could have more or less imagined that it is a lot. What we found out with the (involuntary) help of Apple are some details, which also allow a comparison from this point of view with other mail clients.
It is important to remember that Gmail is by far the most used mail service, with more than 1.5 billion active users, compared to about 400 million for Microsoft Outlook. Those who use Gmail should know that Google shares a lot of information with advertisers including: their approximate geographical location, the Id (an identifier that serves to track them anonymously) and data on the ads seen online; Google also obtains other data, but only “to build better services”: your purchase history, precise location, email address, photos and search history.
From what we understand from iOS, however, Outlook for advertising it analyzes only the data on the ads displayed, but not the position; it does not create a user ID and does not study the history of purchases, but only that of searches.
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A problem that has been going on for years
“Since 2017, that is, since Google stopped reading the content of our emails to provide personalized ads, we have started using Gmail lulled by an apparent feeling of greater safety and protection“, is the comment of Riccardo Berti, a privacy lawyer.
Why really, but to 2017, Google did something that today would make even the least privacy conscious hair stand on end. But it was another era, before the Cambridge Analytica scandal or the American elections, in some way also manipulated through social networks, a period in which Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, he could say that “privacy is dead” without risking lynching.
What happened, as explained by Berti, is that “after 2017, with the excuse of providing better services, Google was able to make its extensive data collection activity acceptable, enticing users interested in the functionality of Gmail, to accept more invasive monitoring “. Yet: “The complete list of what data is processed by the app, revealed by Google with great delay and only after many complaints, allows a quick comparison with other email clients and highlights how the Mountain View program is much more greedy than competitors such as Outlook and Mail, Apple’s native client for managing mail electronics “.
From what we understand, Mail does not use the data at all for advertising purposes and the few information it collects “to improve the product” are not linked to the person who generated them.
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Data built on other data
Returning to Gmail, it can be seen that most of the data collected is so-called metadata, i.e. data that comes from other data: not the content of the conversations, but who wrote them to whom and when.
“Maybe for ordinary people this is not a problem, but for a company or a politician, the existence of ongoing relationships with certain people can have a certain relevance – is the comment of Diego Dimalta, privacy lawyer – Think of the recent case of Matteo Renzi who meets a secret agent at the motorway restaurant: this fact was enough, regardless of the topic of the conversation, for many to form an opinion, whether it was right or wrong. This confirms that even without reading the content of a message, the existence of a data that indicates the frequency and volume of the emails can demonstrate an ongoing relationship between 2 people, capable of affecting markets or politics “.
It’s not over: “Someone might object that Google collects this data, but does not disclose it – this is Dimalta’s hypothesis – But in the event of a data breach or other violations? 2020 was a disastrous year from this point of view. If someone intruded on the Mountain View servers where all this information is contained, the confidentiality of companies, politicians and ordinary people would run a great risk. “Furthermore,” the European Court of Justice has found that sending data to the United States exposes to some form of control by the US government, a circumstance that further increases the risk of loss of confidentiality for the information exchanged “.
How to protect privacy on Gmail
So what to do? “First of all, we can change the Gmail settings to improve our privacy and limit the information we collect. But we can also switch to clients with encryption, with servers in Europe: the market is full of alternatives “, is Dimalta’s advice.
On iPhones you can avoid the Gmail app altogether and use Mail or even open the mailbox on Gmail through the Safari browser, while the more privacy conscious can focus on ProtonMail O Signal for personal communications.
Not easy choices, which few have made and probably few will do, because the privacy scandals that have occurred so far have not been enough to change our online habits that much. The news introduced by Apple on privacy at least they served to clarify and convince some undecided. Which was the purpose they wanted to achieve from Cupertino.
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