#Email is the oldest and most popular way to communicate online.
However, some email providers don't respect privacy. For example, Gmail reads your mail and lets third parties read it too.
There are much more privacy-friendly email providers out there, for example:
Tutanota
https://tutanota.com/
@Tutanota
Posteo
https://posteo.de/en
Protonmail
https://protonmail.com
Fastmail
https://fastmail.com
Thexyz
https://thexyz.com
@switchingsocial does Google still reads your email if you pay them tho?
I wouldn't trust them not to.
Google's corporate culture sees respect for privacy as just leaving money on the table.
@switchingsocial I suspect they might have to respect that because some very big organizations pay them for email hosting and if they snoop on that they would be in such a violation there'd be heck to pay.
Snooping on companies VS snooping on people is a whole different ballgame 
If you cannot verify something, then it becomes a question of trust.
I don't trust companies whose chief executives say things like "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it".
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-gmail-users-privacy-email-lawsuit
@switchingsocial now I'm kind of hoping it'll turn out they do it, if only to see them next in line for legal hot water after Facebook 
@polychrome Payed G Suite accounts don't have ads and have a different terms & conditions.
There is an 3rd party audit (by different company) every year and the audit results are mostly public.
Google doesn't read your mail any more than any other mail provider offering anti-spam features.
3rd party applications are able to read your mail if you as a user or your company administrator allowed them to.
You can dislike Google even without spreading misinformation and FUD, @switchingsocial
I'm not spreading misinformation, I've sourced what I posted.
Google do not respect privacy, you only have to read their own words to see that.
Have you read their own terms and conditions for Google Drive, for example?
https://www.google.com/drive/terms-of-service/
"(When uploading to Google Drive) you give Google a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works ... , communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."
Whatever audits you have, it ultimately comes down to a question of trust. I just don't see evidence of Google earning trust.
For example, hospital personal medical data was gathered without patients' consent (and then folded into the main G company despite promises that it would be kept separate).
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-deepmind-has-access-to-medical-data-of-1-6-million-uk-patients/
This is not a company that has interest in privacy. All its internal incentives drive it to eradicate privacy.
@switchingsocial Google not respecting privacy is a vague statement I'm not interested in disputing right now.
"Gmail reads your mail and lets third parties read it too." was the part I was mostly referring to. There's still a lot to criticise without having to resort to this kind of nonsense.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44699263
"People who have connected third-party apps to their accounts may have unwittingly given human staff permission to read their messages."
Using Google is a great way to give your privacy away by accident, because of some unnoticed trap or other.
When I mention the Google Drive T&Cs to GD users, most of them assume I'm joking, and some of them even point me to Google's general privacy policy without realising that GD has its own policy too.
Even if Google's paid accounts respected privacy, you are still paying Google, and that money is supporting a company that violates privacy of its "free" users.
You can't compartmentalise services, you have to look at the bigger picture because they are all part of the same corporation.
@switchingsocial @polychrome See, this is a valid argument about values, responsibility etc. and I'm always interested to hear those and mostly agree.
But users not reading / understanding what they are agreeing to is very different from "Gmail ... lets third parties read [your mail]..." and stretching the truth that far doesn't help anyone.
I don't think this is representing how the real world works.
Almost any site or service or device nowadays forces you to click "I agree" next to a long block of text which is not really human-readable.
The text is too dense, and there are too many texts to read them all.
Clicking on "I agree" in those circumstances is not meaningful consent.
Google knows this is how the real world works, knows people don't read T&Cs, and it is allowing third parties to exploit it.
@switchingsocial Have you seen the dialog in question to allow the 3rd party access? It's really simple. Why on earth would be Google motivated to mislead people to make them give access to their data to 3rd party. Sorry, but this is getting to insane conspiracy theory level.
@polychrome
Let me say that I appreciate @ondra courage to defend #Google on the #Fediverse.
We need more people with this courage to share minoritarian perspectives.
Actually, I often wonder how Google managers can sleep, met their friends, go to Church and so on... and then decide to manipulate people that way.
I'm not sure their salary explains it fully. They must find a sort moral justification for what they do.
But, TBH, I think it's evident @switchingsocial is simply right this time.
@ondra @switchingsocial @polychrome
The idea that a 3rd party could (even if really independent) find an infraction of people privacy in Google infrastructure is ridiculous.
Suppose they built an illegal profile of me: they just need to put it on a USB stick while the audit is ongoing.
Don't be naive.
What a company says in a T&C doesn't say much about what they do.
People SHOULD really read them (just like with software licenses) but they are really long and unreadable for a reason.
@Shamar @ondra @switchingsocial ... that's a lot of USB sticks.
It's true that any email provider can read any unencrypted mail you receive (or send, if you use their SMTP server too).
#Gmail however can read any unencrypted mail that a wide percentage of Earth population.
It's not the same.
It doesn't just violate the privacy of their users, but that of those who write them who never agreed to be profiled!
As for paid accounts I agree with @switchingsocial: it's naive to think that they don't read it if you are barely interesting.
@switchingsocial @ondra @polychrome
fuck me, that is quite the terms of service. why are we, internet users as a goupt such idiots?
@VeintePesos @switchingsocial @polychrome Lots of popular services have broad clauses like that. There's a pattern when somebody doesn't like a service, reads it's terms, finds these clauses and starts screaming...
https://cybre.space/@rachel/101487844789867867
@ondra @switchingsocial @polychrome
in Shoshana's latest book she speaks of the easy click-thru acceptance of t&c and privacy notices. they are so long and convoluted most just click on through them.
@VeintePesos @switchingsocial @polychrome The "I have read the terms..." checkbox is the biggest lie of all mankind. :)
@switchingsocial @ondra oh interesting, thanks!