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Re: Gmail and accessibility

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From: Cheryl D Wise
Date: Sep 18, 2007 2:50PM


Those are some of them and with Google mail there is also the whole indexing
question. Google uses that indexing to determine what ads to serve with your
mail.

To quote from http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about.html#ads

7. Are there ads in Gmail?

Yes, there are small, unobtrusive, and relevant text ads alongside your
Gmail messages, similar to those on the side of Google search results pages.
The matching of ads to content is a completely automated process performed
by computers. No humans read your email to target the ads, and no email
content or other personally identifiable information is ever provided to
advertisers.

Ads are never inserted into the body text of either incoming or outgoing
Gmail messages and you won't see any pop-ups or untargeted banner ads in
Gmail. In fact, Gmail users have even told us that they've found our ads to
be interesting and even useful.


Cheryl D Wise
MS MVP Expression
Foundation of Microsoft Expression Web
http://by-expression.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Hausler,Jesse

To address the privacy question:

I think the concerns are that the more one uses Google services, the more
information they retain.

To begin with, your search queries are all logged and stored. With or
without an official account, they know what IP addresses are making which
requests.

Do you use google maps from home, from work?
They know where you live, where you work, who you visit, etc...

Do you use Froogle for online shopping? They know what you buy...

Use iGoogle, or google news? They know what news sites you read...

Use Gmail, Gchat? All your emails and chats are stored, and are even scoured
to personalize Ad content.

It's not to say that anything is being done with all this information, but
it can be scary to know that it's all set aside in a neat little package
somewhere.


Some thoughts from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6704013.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3602745.stm