After the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, the concern seemed overwhelming. Even so, today we wake up with a new blow to the privacy of our data on the Internet. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, everything seems to indicate that Google is allowing external developers to read our emails.
Looking back, Google said more than a year ago that it would stop automatically scanning users’ inboxes for advertising purposes. The measure was intended to reassure users and make them see that Google cares about their privacy. Yet, according to the source, the technology giant continues to offer access to our emails to hundreds of software developers, who can easily read the emails of millions of different users.
The Wall Street Journal reports that hundreds of outside companies receive permission to read messages from Gmail users who sign up for email services such as price comparators or automatic travel itinerary planners. As a result, many of the employees of these companies would be responsible for extracting information from our personal emails, while in other cases an automated process would be carried out. One such company would be Return Path, which would currently be scanning 100 million emails per day. All this, of course, for advertising purposes.
After all that has happened recently, users and institutions are demanding more effort from companies to protect user privacy. For this reason, the news is a blow to Google and Gmail, the most widely used email provider today. However, it is interesting to note that in many cases it is the users themselves who accept these types of conditions. In today’s case, many applications require that we authorize access to our email to work, something we sometimes do without blinking.
You can click on this link to check the apps that have access to your email account, each with different permissions.