I’ve discovered something quite shocking. It concerns the privacy of Gmail.
If you use both your Gmail account and your hotmail/yahoo accounts, go to your Spam/Junk/Bulk mail in your accounts. What difference do you notice? I see that the spam messages vary significantly.
For Gmail, I’ve categorized my spam messages into some categories
- Web Design & Promotion: flash, html/php, coding stuff, software promotion on search engines etc.
- Health: pharmacies, pills (legal and appropriete ones)
- Business Management: software, training, etc.
- Banking: ads and “earn more money” things
- Technology: Computers, Game consoles, MP3 players
For hotmail/yahoo, all of the messages are pretty general. There are everything, including all the inappropriete stuff to post on a personal site. More than half of the spam is that.
My primary email is now my gmail one, and use it for my everyday purposes, including web design conversations, paypal/bank/website payment, new gadgets newsletters, and some statistics for certain sites.
Sounds familiar?
It’s just absolutely amazing how the spam messages are directly related to the normal messages I have everyday in my Inbox, the ones I receive and send.
Gmail promised the users’ privacy when viewing/sending email messages. The ads are just there to get some attention for the Google paying ad agencies. But the fact that I’m receiving unsolicited email with the same content as my email messages is kind of queer isn’t it? Or is it?
Now Yahoo/Hotmail doesn’t have this “problem”, or rather a phenomenon. I do the same for my Gmail and Hotmail email addresses - I don’t post them anywhere. For online registrations that require a real email address, I rethink my decision. However, my complaint is not that I’m getting spam anyway. It’s that Gmail seems to know what kind email messages I have, and sends spam emails according to my interest.
Deeper: Is it safe to continue using Gmail?
If this was true that Gmail negotiates with 3rd-party spam agencies to send me annoying messages, what’s the matter? Even though I don’t consider my messages as confidential, I do respect some privacy. But what could Google ever do with my information? Sell them? Woopdido I’m not going to school on Friday.
More important, why is Google related to spam companies? What’s the gain for the G man here? As far as I see it, nothing. I don’t even read my spam messages. I just look at the number of new spam messages just to be amused at how well Gmail catches spam. If no one even reads those messages or even clicks links, there is no profit for those advertisement publishers, which means no profit for Google. Yet I still have the number 200 as the spam counter, and it’s increasing. What is Google really getting?
My nose is bleeding probably because I jabbed one of the legs of my glasses into my mouth, or something. I’ll stop typing.
I only send homework and messages to people about random stuff, and I don’t get spam on Gmail. Interesting. I heard when I first got Gmail that they scan email for specfic words, and use those to send related spam to you.
Well they put ads on the bottom of your messages, according to the keywords in your messages. They never officially announced that they are going to spam us, but nooo.
All I have is the generic re-finance, drugs, “CONGRATULATIONS!!!”, *ahem* , etc. spam. I also have AlienWare and BioWare, but that’s because I somehow signed up for those.
The fact that you have most likely used your gmail account less is a big reason why your spam is still targeted. Targeted advertising or spamming is the way to make money. If you used your email address on other sites there are many things that are likely the culprit. 1. One of the sites you gave your email to may be affiliated with a spam company, and thats why you get targeted spam; 2. Your email shows up on some of those site (under member lists or somthing) and therefore when the spammers spiders crawl the site, they gather your email, and the general content of the site, so they can send you targeted ads.
Google would have no reason to affiliate with spammers. They infact have done a lot with blog spamming so saying they affiliate with spammers is rediculous. If it was ever found out that google DID affiliate with spammers (and it WOULD be found out if it was happening) people would be in an up-roar, and many would resort back to MS product (stoping the google spider from indexing pages, using hotmail, etc)
Anyways.. i just think there are a million other possibilities than what you were getting at.
Yeah I guess Google isn’t dumb enough to do something like that eh.