Who Is Watching Your Inbox?
Friday, July 30th, 2010Author Linda Brady Traynham
I have a superb SPAM filter built into the e-mail provider I use customarily and ferocious protective software on my share of our…seven, is it, now?… computers, so I do not ever get advertisements for Viagra or cures for prostate cancer, neither of which would be of any use to me. True, AOL seems to be a sucker for the Nigeria scam and those who tell me I have won 80,427 pounds, and my oldest computer (full of text I would be loathe to lose) appears to have a soft spot on its circuit boards for AOL because it doesn’t filter out such things any more.
In the last couple of weeks I have been buried in offerings from investment advisory services I never heard of, most of which make me shudder daintily. Only two things have changed in my life that could account for this phenomenon, since I do not believe my sweet, blameless, oh-so-portable Toshiba has been taken over by aliens. It isn’t difficult to identify the snoop because of the timing. The second event was receiving my first communique from Adam Mesh, which was so well-written that I took a moment to dash off a charming little note saying so, because this hard-hearted old Editor virtually never reads anything which does not offend me. Four brief e-mails later–and I mean really brief!–I had joined the crew here and am having a lovely time. I mention this because today’s newbie was something called the “Pit Guru,” very nice charts, something less than 26,000 subscribers, and apparently justly proud of it. If a bunch of you got “the evolution of trading,” drop us notes confirming this and we will go grill the software that guards our subscribers list thoroughly and chastise it sternly.
However, I suspect that over here we have as blameless a bit of software as ever protected us against Russian brides, and the real culprit is…Google. Yup, Google, like the teeshirt with a lot of Pam Anderson hanging out for OO. I’m going to forgive it because if it hadn’t been trying to be helpful I would never have heard of Adam Mesh Trading Group, and look at all the fun I would be missing. Snicker…my dear Charles rails at Google, but he goes with Foxfire and is inundated with pharmaceutical offers and exotic Russian females lusting for 72-year-old American men. Or at least their wallets and green cards.
I’m giving you a break from more technical data to discuss something you may have known, too, that neither of us had realized had any practical applications. Google reads our mail. If you have noticed, you get suggestions over on the right hand side of your monitor that it thinks you might like. Michael tells me admiringly that their propriatary software is so good that after any six searches it can draw very reliable conclusions about not only the user’s intelligence, educational level, and interests, but quite a few other things. Once it has done so, it filters all queries from your machine through that assessment.
Passing lightly over our opinions of machines testing us, do you find that you generally get just what you want somewhere in the top six answers? (No, I don’t feel “lucky” enough when doing research to let the program show me only one site.) In general, what I want is to be found in the top two. I looked into something a couple of weeks ago and an acquaintance who was here questioned my findings. So…I suggested that she ask Google for herself and indicated my machine. She went to her own home page and thence to Google…and came up with 1400 times the answers I had gotten! Well…I grew up when we had things called “card catalogs,” with myriad drawers full of small cards listing real books in a library that have to be flipped through, and this teaches how to define subjects well. Internet makes me feel like John Henry, the steel-driving man, because I loved my card catalogs and still think I can find answers with them more quickly than the average person can with the ‘net.
What…disturbs…me is that Google is becoming entirely too intrusive in its voracious search for knowledge about me. It is one thing for it to notice that I’m interested in investing, but another thing entirely when it is watching so carefully that it notices when my focus changes from macroeconomics to charting. Somewhere in the bowels of the cavern Google lives in is a giant dossier on me, including every search I have ever made and every e-mail I have ever sent r received on g-mail, and quite possible my formidable stack of saved mail over on AOL.
What if the thing sells out to Janet Napolitano? Is it linked to FBI headquarters already, sorting out every jest indicating to the humorless that I am a domestic terrorist? At one time we could have claimed “a reasonable expectation of privacy” for our mail, but we all know better, now. Even destroying the hard drive won’t save us when super snitch is holding all the data. We can but hope that it will overload its capacity…
Linda Brady Traynham
Publishers Note:
Google is already working with the government as most recently noted in this zdnet article. If you review the Terms of Service for Google, the most important being section 2 applying to section 11 you’ll notice that you are giving Google the right to give your information to any “companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships” (11.2)
Most people don’t realize they have already been bent over a barrel, subdued by the sweet caress of Google’s free hand.
Excerpts of Section 2 and 11 from Google TOS:
2. Accepting the Terms
2.1 In order to use the Services, you must first agree to the Terms. You may not use the Services if you do not accept the Terms.
2.2 You can accept the Terms by:
(A) clicking to accept or agree to the Terms, where this option is made available to you by Google in the user interface for any Service; or
(B) by actually using the Services. In this case, you understand and agree that Google will treat your use of the Services as acceptance of the Terms from that point onwards.
2.3 You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if (a) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google, or (b) you are a person barred from receiving the Services under the laws of the United States or other countries including the country in which you are resident or from which you use the Services.
2.4 Before you continue, you should print off or save a local copy of the Universal Terms for your records.
11. Content license from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.
11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.
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Kurt says:
July 30th, 2010
10:57 am
And this surprises people …… why? Google is an information broker, web searches are only a part of one side. Hooking companies up with the info they desire on you is another part, on the other side. And if you don’t think that means supplying info to any government agencies, you really are trying to be blind. Google had a “relationship” with them, if by no other means, simply by the fact that they grant Google permission to be in business via business license. Yes, that falls under the term relationship in a court. Wonder why Google was able to grow so big and get away with a lot of things that others would have found themselves in hot water for?
Steve Foste says:
July 30th, 2010
4:26 pm
I realized much to late that whatever you do on the internet is in someones file and is available to the public.
It is an absolute violaton of privacy, and through the courts they can gather any information they want. Whats worse is that I assume Homeland security can view anything they want anytime they want, and have programs set up to notice and flag specific items to be reviewed.
It is Big Brother at it’s best. They don’t need a camera in evey home, every home has the internet.
Might be the #1 reason they spent money in the stimulus package to expand broadband, a few week areas in the Big Brother coverage.
I never thought of that until just now.
Steve
Lynne says:
July 31st, 2010
8:19 pm
Gosh Face book just had a leak of 100 million profiles and MSNBC in their infinite wisdom posted it again. Now I don’t think I’m overly paranoid but what can it hurt to protect yourself and a bit of privacy? Twitter has no security and the makers of the software just laugh all the way to the bank.
I hope I’m just small enough to ignored and trying to put some safe guards in place. But I was to trusting. Don’t make the same mistake. Look at “Proxy servers” go Firefox or Opera as a browser. Remember don’t give the idiots in the federal government to much credit. That’s a hell of a lot of data to wade through.
Essie Feldhacher says:
August 1st, 2010
4:54 am
Eh, about a year ago I told people “Eat Your Spam” by which I meant instead of blindly deleting spam without taking a look, go in and see what would be considered by the USPS “first class mail” that via topic headers Yahoo, etc. toss into spam as they don’t want you to receive it. Indeed, try emailing YOURSELF certain things with words they don’t like (the list growin’ by the day….) and see how you can’t even send YOURSELF stuff as if they don’t like the content you are spamming yourself, LOL. Then, when that happens – tweak the subject – something boring and innocuous like, “You’re invited to the Family Reunion!” and the verboten message comes right to your inbox. Recently Yahoo was pullin’ tricks of not letting a person click the box and remain signed in. Repeated resigning ins needed…AND gee whiz, they had a Facebook link one was encouraged to fill out/sign in so you could access your email because you’d caved in to forced FB signups.
Cute….
Tex Norton says:
August 2nd, 2010
3:54 pm
I switched to Firefox years ago due to the IE hacking risk. The fox seems to be compatible with most of the applications I use (I can’t use Copernic Desktop Search unfortunately). Firefox features Google as the search-feature of record. I use it but I know better. Recently, I was searching for airfares to Vancouver (Agora Financial Symposium) and for a week afterward, the advertising message on the right side of my screen offered book-now; cheap-fares to guess where?
I have filtered my inbox to only show messages from folks already in my contacts-list or on my white list. Everything else goes to the junk mail file. I scan the junk mail file a couple of times a day and then just delete all. For really serious violations, I go to the trouble of actually blocking offensive sources so they don’t even show up in my junk.
I have perhaps a dozen different email addresses, too. I intentionally have several I use as “throw-away” meaning when I’m asked to give a valid email address in order to access some site, I use a throw-away email so that they don’t then bother me on a daily basis. For years, I just go to those emails and hit the delete button just in order to keep that email active. It saves me a great deal of time.
I recommend that you use a stand-alone email rather than the one provided by your ISP. I’ve changed ISPs many times but continue to keep my same personal email account. Otherwise, I’d be forced to keep advising all of you that I just changed my email address – again – so please change your address book – again. Very inconsiderate.
While I’m on the subject, if you forward emails, PLEASE delete all the prior “history.” Guess where spammers harvest many of their active email addresses? You cause your own problems by being lazy and not cleaning-up an email before you forward it. You don’t have my permission to forward something I’ve sent you without first removing my name. In the same vein, use the “Bcc” address option if you’re sending the same email to more than one person. If you use the “To” or the “Cc” version, all those addresses are visible to everyone else receiving the email. That’s extremely inconsiderate for starters and invites abuse when someone can then “reply all” with their inane response.
There is an email etiquette and it would be helpful if more folks followed it. It would also help eliminate the need to watch your inbox so closely.
Tex
Kevin says:
August 3rd, 2010
10:06 am
Email is like a post card that can be scanned by every server it crosses going from one location to another. If you really care about the info your sending to someone encrypt it. Heck encrypt it for fun just to give those DARPA servers something to chew on every once in a while.
Every time you make a request through another server it can track back to the originating site. There are anonymous server proxies that can be used. Most in the US have to conform to logging requirements if they are site hosting though, so it’s not really anonymous.
Next up cell phones. They use the “public airwaves”, so it’s a grey area about what it takes to get caller info or request a repeater tap. To say nothing of the fact that the equipment exists to just listen in.
Online backup services… I’m not sure what the contractual agreements are because I do my own backups, but I’d be willing to bet that a court could subpoena info and also delay notification for quite a while. Meaning that you’d never know they decided to look at all your files just to see if maybe you filed your taxes the way IRS agent A told you to instead of the way IRS agent B interprets that particular rule.
The best bet is remembering that there are always far more interesting things for various companies and agencies to do then nose through your stuff. My mantra for the new century: I’m the most boring person in the whole wide world.
Linda Brady Traynham says:
August 6th, 2010
3:24 am
I wish I understood the replies! I love the idea of encrypting, and suppose I find software for that, not that I suppose it would deter many, but wouldn’t that mean that my correspondents would have to have the code? Code-breaker?
James the Wanderer says:
August 6th, 2010
11:24 am
Hey Texas Lady, try PGP for encryption; Anonymizer or Cryptohippie for surfing; and possibly carrier pigeons if all else fails (VBG!) I’ve also heard of something called Tor, but haven’t had time to look into it; since I do most of my stuff at a university, the firewalls are run by geeks and generally pretty good. That doesn’t stop spam either, not completely, but I don’t use Google except for literature searches and similar.
Best of luck; the sneaks and the spooks can spy all they want, but they cannot make me buy!
cheers!
james
Kevin says:
August 6th, 2010
2:57 pm
Linda,
The way most encryption works is with 2 keys. One is public, everything sent to you is encrypted with that key. The other is private, that is what you decrypt with. So if you want to send something to someone encrypted you use their public key. If someone sends you something they use your public key. Believe it or not these are a pretty good layer. We’ve started hitting the point where the government is behind the times as far as code breaking is concerned. RIM the makers of the Blackberry just got told by the US that they had to turn over their encryption system in order to sell in the US. Because of course the feds couldn’t break their encryption.
Linda Brady Traynham says:
August 11th, 2010
8:53 pm
Chortles, James! We actually looked into carrier pigeons a couple of years ago, but it involves raising at least a mating pair for everyone you might want messages from (daughter, son, and a friend or two for me), and sending them the birds. They, in turn, have to hatch out and raise a pair to bring to me. If the boids are let out accidentally they go “home.” There is no way to tell them “go back to where you live.”
Linda Brady Traynham says:
August 11th, 2010
8:54 pm
Probably I don’t need to encrypt anything, but codes have always always fascinated me. Thanks for the advice, guys.