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Do not expect Google to completely remove marketing companies from your Gmail inbox.
The company told a group of US senators that Gmail add-ons that scan your inbox may choose to transfer your data to another person, but only if they know.
"Developers can share data with third parties as long as they are transparent with users about how they use the data," Google vice president Susan Molinari wrote to the Senate Commerce Committee in a statement. a letter from July.
A year ago, Google ended its controversial email analytics practice, used to serve targeted ads. however, The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that hundreds of external software developers could still search your inbox with Gmail add-ons and mobile apps if you'd agreed to install them.
These apps can help you organize your inbox, offer purchase price comparisons and other e-mail related tools. But according to the NewspaperThe apps also allowed their developers to view unexpurgated personal emails, which can be used for marketing or product refinement purposes. In one case, 8,000 emails were read by analysts from an application provider to help train the company's software.
The news prompted the Senate Commerce Committee to question Google about its e-mail privacy practices and whether user data could be exposed. "The lack of monitoring by Google to ensure that Gmail data is properly protected is a concern," said the committee at the time.
However, Google told legislators that the company had put in place safeguards to prevent potential abuse. "We are constantly working to have veterinary developers and their applications integrate with Gmail before allowing them to request access to user data," wrote Molinari in his letter, first published Thursday.
His letter refrained from answering questions about how app developers can share Gmail user data with third parties. However, applications requiring access to Gmail data must be subject to a manual review by Google, which involves reviewing the privacy policy of the application and the applications. data privileges that she seeks to obtain, she said.
"Once given access, we use machine learning (AI-based software algorithms) to monitor these applications," added Molinari. "If we detect significant changes in the behavior of the application after it is approved, we will perform a new manual review of the application."
To educate users, Google will issue warnings when a third-party application is installed to indicate the data it wants to get in your Gmail inbox and if the application has been verified. In the past, the company has suspended applications for not being transparent to users, violating its rules on spam and requesting data permissions that are not relevant to the application.
Molinari also wondered if Google employees already have access to your inbox. "No human at Google reads Gmail users, except in very specific cases where they ask us and give their consent, or for security purposes, such as investigating a bug or abuse," the company said.
Nevertheless, Google's defense assumes that users read all the details of an application's privacy policy, while many of them can be lengthy and difficult to read. The whole question is a reminder to pay attention to the modules you install.
Next week, Google and other technology companies will face the Senate as part of a data privacy hearing.
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