Google defends Gmail privacy after email report read

Another day, another privacy issue: Who reads your Gmail?

Google's answer is that it depends, because it was forced to go on the defensive this week after a report revealed cases where human employees of third-party application developers filtered through e-mails from Gmail users.

"No one in Google reads your Gmail except in very specific cases where you ask us and give your consent, or for security reasons, for example Suzanne Frey, Director of Security, Trust and privacy for Google Cloud, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

But Gmail users who give applications access to their emails do so at their own risk.

In his blog, Frey said stated that third-party application developers go through automatic and manual reviews.The company requires an accurate representation by the developers of their applications and should only request relevant data.

However, "we strongly encourage you to view the permissions screen before allowing access to any application other than Google. "19659007] Receive new techniques in your inbox the mornings of the week. Sign up for the free Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter

The Wall Street Journal report shows critics of two application developers, New York-based Return Path and San Jose-based Edison Software, are reading Personal emails from Gmail users for a couple of different reasons: Return Path email marketing because he needed to train his software, and the Edison email software maker for a new feature. The two companies told the Journal that they believed their privacy policies and their use agreements allowed them to do so, although the newspaper noted that the company's privacy policy " mentions the possibility that humans view users' e-mails. "

additional comment.

Gmail's questions come in the wake of the Facebook Analytica scandal of Facebook, which highlighted the access of third-party application developers to the personal information of Facebook users. In this case, the political data company accessed the information of 87 million users of the social network without their permission after buying the data from a researcher of the same. University of Cambridge. Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, then told the Vox information site that the company could "prevent the transmission of messages" and that the company confirmed to Bloomberg that it could automatically scan messages from users of Messenger to search for "abusive behavior"

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