Google admits that some services can transmit Gmail data to others

Last year, Google announced that it would no longer scan users' Gmail emails for keywords that could target ads. However, in early July, a the Wall Street newspaper report showed that Google still left third party services access people's Gmail accounts.

This report caught the attention of US lawmakers, who asked Google to explain what it was. The company did it in a letter that was made public on Thursday. And what's interesting is that Google has admitted to not only giving third party developers access to Gmail accounts, but also allowing them to share what they found with other third parties.

"Developers can share data with third parties as long as they are transparent with users about how they use the data," wrote Susan Molinari, US public policy manager at Google. Newspaper.

As Google (googl) explained in a blog post following the initial story, the types of third-party services it connects to Gmail include e-mail clients, travel planners, and management systems. customer relationship.

These services, which Google claims to control carefully, usually read e-mails in an automated way, though humans sometimes read them too. Users must actively allow applications to access their Gmail accounts and revoke their permission.

However, the Google article did not discuss the possibility that these third-party services share user data with other third parties.

Marc Rotenberg, President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told Newspaper it was "simply impossible for Gmail users to imagine that their personal data would be transferred to third parties", and the revelation showed that the "privacy policy template is simply irreparable repairable".

Google hopes better that all applications with such privileges actually inform users of data transmission to third parties. In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires full disclosure on this front.