Google Spies On NON-Google Emails - THIS WILL SCARE THE @$&% OUT OF YOU!

[ksimons]

Run time: 06:06 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg7pVFVqMMg   Posted on YouTube: November 16, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: November 19, 2008 By DU Member: ksimons Views on DU: 6327

 
If you were wondering what BIG BROTHER looks like in this new century, you are starting to get a good look right now - take a look at what Google is doing to your personal information. If you send an email to someone with a G-mail account, it will be read by Google - no matter what email YOU use. If you think the government can't subpoena this information, think again.

[Divine Discontent]

1. now why'd you have to go and ruin gmail for me?

ha! I noticed the ads right away, and I didn't that they were using the keywords of my email to spam me. The one that is the most annoying is the one right above the option buttons in gmail, so it looks like an email to you and I have looked at it most of the time I've used my gmail.

on second thought - isn't DU under google analytics? and everything we type is fed into google's system and spewed out in the form of an ad to people who aren't donors? Maybe Obama and the Democratic Congress can do something about this spying on us...


Many different Yes We Did items in the Obama/Biden section www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable

[ksimons]

2. sorry :)

Actually, the biggest issue potentially is the first one - where a subpoena could potentially be issued for an email that was being started, but was never even sent (or intended to be sent) - sort of like getting a subpoena for your THOUGHTS!!

[coyotespaw]

4. We live in a world with

keyloggers and warrantless wiretaps. Even though we're (hopefully) entering into a new era of hope and promise, don't forget the old cynicism. Always be ready to mean what you say, say it decisively, and stand by it.

[ksimons]

5. you're right, folks who say 'there's nothing scary there' forget Bush's legacy too quickly

Neglected security measures are always taken advantage of over citizens - Look at Bush-Cheney, and that's just the stuff we KNOW about - tip of the iceberg. It is the folks that say 'relax, it's nothing' that you have to worry about.

[Divine Discontent]

7. yep, I thought the same thing - let's say someone just got fired, or their partner cheated on you

and in a moment of anger, they, being the non-violent typical human decided to vent their frustration in an email to them, getting caught up in the moment, they start off the email yelling at them, but eventually it turns to "if you don't make up for this I'll fu**ing burn your house down with you in it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you bastard!", then after finishing up the email, they realize they're just typing out anger, but gmail has already sent it to the server and stored it!

YIKES! Now, there's probably no worries about that in the near future, but who's to say someday we don't have to worry about that kind of thing also with internet security! Our privacy is hanging in the balance, and I thought google was supposed to be for privacy, but of course, when they sold out to the Chinese demands, I knew that wasn't the case, and the 2 dudes have to make money for the bazillion trillion dollars they got when the stock went public.

Eat Snacky S'mores.

[onlyadream]

23. Exactly...

and then by some fluke the guys house DOES burn down...now those thoughts can be held against him/her.

[nichomachus]

26. The moral of the story is

don't type anything into your computer you don't want the whole world to see.

It's as simple as that.

I've been telling people that for 25 years. In the early '80s, I had email -- long before most people knew what it was. I worked for a company that was working on developing email. I saw the potential for problems then, and I've been trying to warn people ever since.

Also, don't put anything on your Web site, MySpace, Facebook -- or any other online site -- that you wouldn't want entered as evidence in a trial.

I used to work in family court. You wouldn't believe the shit people put up on their Web sites. We had one woman, trying to get full custody of her kids, portraying herself as mother of the year, and her ex brought in copies of her MySpace page where she talked about how drunk she got last weekend, how she got a party drug pill caught in her throat, and how many guys she went down on. The judge was not impressed.

There was another woman who was demanding an increase in child support, but her MySpace page bragged about her two boob jobs. Her ex argued that if she could afford boob jobs, she didn't need more money from him. The judge agreed with the ex.

[CrispyQ]

40. "Expectation of privacy" - know when you have it & when you don't!

You offer good advice. Most of it is common sense. And yet, it's surprising how many people are clueless about the digital age. I worked at a company where one of the employees used his company provided text messaging pager to communicate with people he was selling drugs to. He was surprised when he was fired & claimed invasion of privacy, but had no legitimate argument to base it on. Interestingly enough, the company was alerted to his activities because he consistently went over his alloted long distance cell time minutes & they decided to investigate all of his electronic communication.

[DS1]

45. It's not ruined

This is just some stupid internet shithead making wild leaps of logic. He clearly has zero understanding of how email works in the first place, especially server-side webmail.

Gmail is fine.

[PatrynXX]

57. Use Pop3

Haven't used gmail's main website for that much anyway. I use their pop3 service through Thunderbird 3 (alpha test) technically called Shredder. Obviously works on anything else that does pop3

thats why I like it. Hotmail used to require Outlook. Used it all the time then. Now it has it's own program. Live mail Beta. So use it more often. Mostly gmail though. It's fast, and can send big files thru it. My own ISP sucks. Only has a 20 mb thats 20 freaking MEGABYTES limit. Don't think I can send one decent 30 second video with that.

[DerekJ]

3. This is all B.S. There is nothing scary there. The author might have found some neglected

security measures but that's about it.

[midnight]

13. That's right. And whats more, when Obama voted to amend

the fisa bill with updates for more spying power, he told us that he would have the watchers watch the watchers or something like that. So there is no need to be concerned.

[truedelphi]

33. Go Bama!

Sorry for the enthuisiasm of this message, but if they are all watching us, maybe I better start showing some enthusiasm, today if not sooner!!

[madhawk]

28. america

you can tell this guy dosn't live in america, land of the so called free.
hawk

[DUlover2909]

6. Big brother is always watching us to see what we're using now.

Oooh, the public has fast cars? We gotta get faster cars. They're using radios to communicate? We gotta get better radios. They have radar detectors? We gotta make laser speed detectors. They have an internet? We have to worm our way into that media.

It's like big business pushing it's way into the Super Bowl. "They like that football stuff, huh? OK, then let's pretend like we made it happen and put our face on the whole thing. You like football? How about Tostitos? It's kinda like football! You can dip it in salsa made by us too while you watch the whoevers play that other team!"

Remember local phone service commercials? I remember paying an ass-load to call long distance and I wondered, "Why do I have to pay extra to call a place that's only 50 miles away, and I pay less to call 1,000 miles away, and it depends on when I make the call whether the rate is X or Y? Funny how there are no longer any local phone companies advertising any more. Funny how now all calls are treated the same and long distance doesn't matter. Funny how now every phone commercial is for wireless service.

The phone companies are fucking us over hand over fist. The advertisers are attaching themselves to whatever we happen to like today. Big Brother is recording everything we say and buy. Money is the driving force every time in society.

[Divine Discontent]

8. I agree - there really is no privacy anymore - everything we buy is attached to where we bought it,

when we bought, what type of person bought it, and if it's on the net, what browser, what operating system, what laptop, what ISP how late, what time zone - and all that data is piled up in servers to be sold to advertise to us directly. Never mind the data being kept having what I consider private info that no one should have after the visit/sale.

[DFW]

9. I'll have to go back to sending my email in Basque or Finnish

The only trouble is, that's good for communicating with Nicholai Hel or Nokia,
but not much else, and one of them is fictional as it is........

[CrispyQ]

42. But is Fat Boy fictional?

;)

[DFW]

56. Fat Boy was probably the most factual part of the whole novel...

With the possible exception of The Mother Company, which could have
been either Halliburton or the Carlyle Group, even if neither existed
in their present form at the time.

[Howzit]

10. You need to use code only understood by your target audience or

learn some obscure language.

Jy moet 'n kode gebruik wat net deur die ander persoon verstaan word, of jy moet maar 'n taal leer wat deur min mense gebruik word.

[ksimons]

11. oooh pig latin will make a big comeback!!! nt

[flor-de-jasmim]

12. Dutch (right?) isn't obscure enough!

[Howzit]

14. Another derivative, like Flemish N/T

[BelgianMadCow]

54. Hey! Zijn wijle me twee misschien?

:hi:

[Howzit]

55. Nee. Van ZA N/T

[dbmk]

15. They store the emails and display them on a web page

How on earth did this guy imagine google could do that without actually storing and presenting(reading) your email-text?
Its a web mail for crying out loud.

[EOTE]

43. Don't ask me.

And the guy is acting like it's actual people reading his emails as opposed to a computer whose sole job it is to stream advertising based upon the contents of these emails. It's not like there's some guy going, "Oooh, I bet this guy would be super interested in some ED pills!" I doubt there are any gmail users who don't know how the advertising content gets to their screen.

[Muttocracy]

60. yep - realistically, your internet service provider and email provider

have access. Not sure this is news, and most of the "scary" stuff was about the new browser thing, not Gmail.

[mwooldri]

16. Nothing to see here, move on...

From Day One, there has been the capability of email being broke into, being read, etc.

ALL competent email administrators have a means to get into your email inbox and read the messages without you knowing. All incompetent email administrators know how to change your password to get into your email and read it.

Gmail is inherently no less private than a Yahoo! account or a Hotmail account. Remember over the election season, Failin's Yahoo! account got compromised? All they did AFAIK is guess at the security questions that Failin might have used to set up the account and apparently they got in.

Oh, and did anyone mention Carnivore? or Echelon?

If you're really paranoid about email security then you will need to encrypt it. You'll need your recipients' public key and you will need to compose your email offline in something like Notepad and then encrypt it. Then you can attach it to any email you like using any application. The recipient will then have to remove it from the received email, save it locally and then they can read it. And even then this is of course not 100% secure - the computer may be bugged, the email message might be intercepted, copied and then hacked into.

Personally I think that gmail is clever. They found a way to monetize regular email. No individual is of course reading your email, it's all done by computer script. I know that. SSL mode can help keep things a little more private but only from going from out your computer to Googles'... The video may have a valid point about the Chrome shortcuts hiding some gmail options but that is of course easily circumvented: log into Chrome directly. Or avoid it.

[AsahinaKimi]

17. I bet this is happening on Google messenger as well

My friend just got a new cellphone and it has GOOGLE messenger for free, while other messengers like MSN, Yahoo, etc she is charged for. I have a g-mail account but rarely use it. She had me go on Google to chat with her over her cell phone. I would imagine everything we said was stored somewhere at Google. I have just sent her an email to stop useing Google messenger..cause I am sure
its probably doing the same thing.

This is so wrong, in so many ways. :(

[TreasonousBastard]

18. This is ancient news. At one point years ago...

Yahoo even had a phone option "If you are a government agency with a subpoena, press 5" or something like that.

And some guy at AT&T told me that he anonymizers so popular at one time were all run by the FBI.

Since I'm not plotting the revolution I'm not really worried about the gray suits knocking on the door, but it has always been bothersome that someone knows what listserves I'm on.

[mmonk]

19. If they subpoena me, I will tell about the iilegal activity of government

officials I've sent emails about to g mail accounts and it will be in a court transcript. So let them go ahead, I dare them.

[L. Coyote]

31. Hilarious. Trust me, the government ignores illegal activity reporting,

at least when reporting on Republican election irregularities.

How I wish the Justice Department would read all my computer activity!!!!!

[mmonk]

58. I was thinking if I got to court on a bogus charge.

My testimony would be a court record no?

[JohnyCanuck]

20. I supect many will not be scared by this report at all (unfortunately)

Many, I suspect, will hear about this and not be scared at all. "It's no big deal," will be the typical reaction. So what if they snoop in my incoming and outgoing emails to direct ads at me. I even agreed to it when I signed up, and if they are snooping around in my incoming emails as well (which I didn't know about) it's still nothing to worry about. It's just another way for them to make a buck by sending a few ads my way.

Like the frog sitting in the stove pot, no one pays attention when the water gets slowly hotter just by one degree or so at at time. The frog is oblivious to warnings that the cook fully intends to slowly raise the water to boiling at some point in the future, and just sits there and enjoys his warm bath. Those now enjoying the convenience of their free Gmail accounts will probably wake up one day and wonder, "How come we're all living in 1984?"

Is the U.S. Turning Into a Surveillance Society?

SNIP

The ACLU said that its report, , is an attempt to step back from the daily march of stories about new surveillance programs and technologies and survey the bigger picture. The report argues that even as surveillance capacity grows like a "monster" in our midst, the legal "chains" needed to restrain that monster are being weakened. The report cites not only new technology but also erosions in protections against government spying, the increasing amount of tracking being carried out by the private sector, and the growing intersection between the two.

"From government watch lists to secret wiretaps -- Americans are unknowingly becoming targets of government surveillance," said Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. "It is dangerous for a democracy that government power goes unchecked and for this reason it is imperative that our government be made accountable."

A recent illustration of the danger, according to the ACLU report, is the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, which seeks to sift through a vast array of databases full of personal information in the hunt for terrorism. "Even if TIA never materializes in its current form," Steinhardt said, "what this report shows is that the underlying trends are much bigger than any one program or any one controversial figure like John Poindexter."

Steinhardt said that Americans haven't yet felt the full potential of the new technology for invading privacy because of latent inefficiencies in how government and businesses handle information. "Database inefficiencies can't be expected to protect our privacy forever," said Steinhardt. "Eventually businesses and government agencies will settle on standards for tying together information, and gain the ability to monitor many of our activities -- either directly through surveillance cameras, or indirectly by analyzing the information trails we leave behind us as we go through life.

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/gen/index.html

[stark6935]

21. I use hush mail for things

I don' want anybody to read...

[nyc 4 Biden]

22. This is very disturbing.

I stopped using Gmail a while back when I was sending private information to my patent lawyer and I kept seeing ads for products relating to my patent. This scared the crap out of me. I am glad others are picking up on this invasion of privacy.

[EnviroBat]

24. Damn dude, get a frikkin glass of water, of hit your inhaler.

Or at least, stop eating the mic. I could barely make out the content through that shitty narrative. Sounds like the guy is gargling broken glass and pig anus's. I could barely make it through listening to that over-modulated crap.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

25. This in itself doesn't scare me...

It's only a computer looking for keywords to send me advertisements. But the potential od what further uses this can be put to is scary indeed. I know the government is tracking my emails, but here is everything I've ever sent should they ever wish to read it. I'll definitely be more careful what I send over gmail in the future.

[ContraBass Black]

27. Is this about how Gmail parses the text and displays tools and utilities

Based on keywords and regular expressions?

If so, calm down and return to reality. No one is reading your e-mail but the the sender and recipients. The same way a search engine parses the text of webpages so that it can show you relevant ones when you enter a search term, Gmail's interface parses the text of an e-mail so that it can display relevant ads. To be shocked and appalled about this is like exclaiming "Oh my God! You mean when I use my credit card, somebody sends junk mail to my house based on what I'm buying? Police state!" If the government wants to find out what you're e-mailing about, they'll do it just the same as they would have 20 years ago.

If you want to get angry or disturbed about Gmail, then get angry or disturbed about how it uses the position of your mouse pointer to determine whether or not you're reading the advertisements, how frequently, and for how long.

[ksimons]

36. is that true? on any page or just google?

what if I spin my mouse arrow around and around the ads for porn - does that give them an idea I may reeeeally want that item but don't dare click on it in case someone at work sees me? heh heh heh

[IndependentDem]

37. stop making sense. were trying to be scared here.

:scared:

[renie408]

50. I know, here I was all ready to run amok and all this annoying logic has just RUINED that for me!!

[Amonester]

29. I won't be surprised when the maRket foRces will build houses...

with "imbedded" microscopic video cameras everywhere into the walls ...

"Invisible"

Make no mistakes: (if it's not already 'done' ...) THAT DAY WILL COME SOONER THAN LATER!

Get used to it, or go live in the woods, away and free of all that sh*T.

[jhrobbins]

30. This is moot for me as I don't use g-mail. I did download Chrome

however, but I have no idea how to use it - it is a big blank page with no directions and I cannot see how it compares to IE.

[Piewhacket]

32. Google - Don't be Evil!

[darkism]

34. The autosave AJAX request is sent over an SSL connection. Also...

Empty your drafts box.

[no limit]

35. This is the most misleading BS I have seen in a while

it's unfortunate people are out there spreading false information such as this.

First off the auto save feature uses an SSL channel, so it is encrypted. The other main complaint he seems to have is that you don't know you are in a web site in Chrome. That's also a bunch of crap. You are in a web browser, therefore you are on the web. Finally, google does not spy on your messages. Adwords uses an automated system to gather ads and that system doesn't save any of your personal information on their servers.

[ksimons]

38. I'm dumping g-mail and making sure no one I send to uses g-mail - just not American

this IS tantmount to eavesdropping on your phone and I think it's out of bounds when someone who SENDS an email to g-mail didn't authorize the reading of their e-mail yet it gets analyzed and info from it is re-routed where it can obviously be read by someone - he did it in the video.

hope the privacy lawyers take google to the judicial bank and drain their idiotic minds (and bank accounts) for being so obviously un-private in this

[DS1]

46. You're clueless

and I hope nobody takes your bullshit advice.

[gorfle]

39. It's not just Google.

This is not a Google phenomenon. In fact, it has nothing to do with Google at all.

The fact of the matter is, if you use email, your email is passing through some (or several) ISPs email servers. So even if you don't send email to a gmail account, your email has passed through at least one commercial email server, and probably several. Any of these can be intercepted or subpoenaed along the way.

The safest thing is to assume all electronic communications are monitored.

If you must send sensitive information through email, use encryption, like PGP.

http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=pgp+email+encryption&btnG=Google+Search

Bottom line: Email is terrible insecure no matter who you use to send it, or who you send it to.

[Muttocracy]

61. thanks - I was thinking, isn't this all true of other email? nt

[Xithras]

41. Anyone "scared" by this should just smash their computer now.

Seriously. This guy is painting a picture claiming that GMail is "evil" because it's:

A. Web based. Shame on them for putting their email client ON THE INTERNET. God knows that those tubes might leak or something. Aren't they aware that we're all the owned property of Microsoft and should be shackled to Outlook all day long (hint for the uninitiated: for security reasons, web based applications are not permitted to cache AJAX data onto your computer in real time).

B. Server based. Wow, they actually SEND THE TEXT OF OUR EMAILS TO THEIR SERVERS WHILE WE'RE TYPING THEM. What kind of evil nonsense is THAT?!?! I mean, that email would have NEVER been sent to their server if not for this diabolical new feature. When we hit that send button, our emails are sent directly from our computers to the recipients computers anyway. Right? Right!?! (hint for the uninitiated: Google saves the data to the drafts folder, where it can be deleted. If you don't want your messages on their server, you shouldn't be using their service...because every sent email gets relayed through their servers ANYWAY. If you don't like that idea, go buy some stamps because teh interwebs are obviously out to get you).

C. Written to comply with a recognized technological standard called AJAX. Realtime data transfers? Behavior mimicing a desktop app? How dare they. Don't they know that they're supposed to be writing server based web applications? Oh. Waitaminute. Maybe I should instead complain that they are using standards instead of writing their own incomprehensible protocols like Microsoft does. Darn, I don't think that will work either.

This video just goes to show how uninformed some people can be, and how easy it is to whip up a fakeroversy using nothing more than YouTube and an ominous voiceover.

[Muttocracy]

62. Next they'll be telling us Google archives pages from discussion boards!!!!!1111 nt

[DS1]

44. fucking RETARD

that's all I have to say about this goddamn idiot

/your friendly neighborhood network admin

[renie408]

51. Yeah, he went FULL retard! The board doesn't like it when you go FULL retard....n/t

[whistle]

47. Does Goggle now know everyone who has watched this whistleblower video?

...I wonder, uhmmm. :yoiks:

[amyrose2712]

48. "nod your head, just in case they could be watching...

with their tiny satellites....."-TR

[bitchkitty]

49. You're easily frightened. This is a non-issue, and nothing

new or frightening about it. It's a webmail application - same as Yahoo, same as MSN, or whatever. Google doesn't scare me at all.

[Doughboy71]

52. It's all in the EULA

End User license agreement from Google for Gmail & Chrome. BTW you probably want to stop using Google Desktop as well because it sends a listing of the contents of your computer to Google as well.

The reason people like Gmail & Chrome is because it collects this information and makes it handy when you search for something. You see the info you already have and anything new on the internet. As an I.T. director of a law firm, I banned Chrome and Google Desktop when they were introduced because of attorney / client privilege.

[Muttocracy]

63. that seems like the important issue to me - Google Desktop, not Gmail. nt

[Umbram]

53. Something to make ignorant people very, very concerned.

Anyone who finds this even partially concerning should unhitch dem there tubes from the interweb.

[Muttocracy]

59. Google Mail's privacy disclosures:

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_privacy.html

[johnnyrocket]

64. Um, gmail is free, so what do you expect? Just get a pay email account...

...they won't break you.

[comrade snarky]

65. Wont matter...

Let me say loudly,
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SECURE EMAIL. None, Zero, Nada. Doesn't exist. Like leprechauns or Eskimos it's a figment of your imagination.

There is a reason presidents don't use it and it's not just that Shrub is too stupid to find the on button.

At the very least the administrator always has access. Always. Email is akin to holding a conversation in a public square. Probably no one is listening, but I wouldn't count on it and talk loudly about my upcoming bank heist or the affair I'm planning. As someone mentioned above you could type it up in a text editing app, encrypt it and send it using public keys but even that isn't %100.

[TransitJohn]

66. Doesn't everyone

realize that their entire online existence is one long big brother style data mining expedition? All designed to profile everyone? Shit, I bet Google can tell if I'm going to Starbucks or the local joint for my coffee in 10 minutes just by analyzing this post.

[Zombie2]

67. I sent a letter to google.......

:kick: