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  • From: "Christian Stalberg" <cpsr_rtp AT internet-lab.com>
  • To: <cpsr-rtp AT cpsr.org>, <cpsr-privacy AT cpsr.org>, <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
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  • Subject: [internetworkers] Google Responds to Gmail Privacy Concerns
  • Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 06:06:29 -0400

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3335481



Google Responds to Gmail Privacy Concerns


By Janis Mara | April 2, 2004

Google's newly announced free e-mail offering has strengthened its position
against Yahoo! and MSN. Before it can continue to battle its competition in
earnest, however, it's working to quell privacy concerns.

The company's plans to include contextually targeted ads in its Web e-mail
client are the cause for the concern, because Google intends to have its
technology scan the content of e-mail messages, and target ads accordingly.
Now that it's clear the initiative isn't an April Fool's joke, analysts,
industry figures and individuals are debating the decision across the Net.
Meanwhile a group of privacy advocates are drafting a letter asking Google
to clarify its policies.

"The fact that it's machines is irrelevant," said Pam Dixon, executive
director of the World Privacy Forum. "Machines are more efficient than
humans and far more able to be privacy invasive than humans because they
can read so much more.

"We're concerned that users of Gmail, who must give Google their names to
sign up, may have their names correlated with the search terms they type in
when searching. This can be done through cookies and IP addresses," Dixon
said.

"Google needs to make a commitment to its users to never correlate that
information," Dixon said.

Dixon's group is drafting a letter to be sent to Google calling on the
Internet giant to clarify its policies with regard to Gmail. Her group has
approached other privacy organizations to sign on to the letter and at
least one has indicated likely approval.

"It would be an important improvement if Google stated it won't correlate
the information," said Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Google has become a
bread-and-butter tool to many people. The erosion of user privacy may lead
to harm in the brand name and to individuals discontinuing use."

In response, Google says what's drawing concern is what computers are
capable of doing, not what the company does in reality. "We pride ourselves
in protecting users' data and holding ourselves to he highest standard,"
said Wayne Rosing, VP of engineering for Google.

"We do not keep that data in correlated form, it's separated in various
ways and we have policies inside the company that do not allow that kind of
correlation to happen. We consider any program or programming that
correlates user data with user identity to be a violation of trust and we
do not do that," said Rosing.

But Rosing stopped short of saying that the company will never correlate
the data.

"Then it gets to be an issue of what happens if we have to do something to
comply with a legal situation," he said, apparently speaking of criminal
cases in which the company might be subpoenaed by law enforcement.

It's worth mentioning that Google already has the power to correlate IP
addresses and search queries and clicks -- something Rosing says has never
occurred.

"I have been here a long time and I have no knowledge of that kind of
situation [correlation] ever happening. It does not happen and every
employee of Google knows they cannot do this. We have extensive monitoring
of our people," Rosing said.

"We have very strict policies. We do not associate search clicks with a
user's name or anything like that. And in certain cases we age data and it
disappears from the system to provide enhanced privacy protection," Rosing
said.

Rosing also pointed out that when computers filter spam, "they have to look
at the e-mail in detail or they can't find the spam. It's nothing
extraordinary or new going on here."

Dispelling the worries may largely be a matter of Google's clearly
communicating its intentions, and making sure people understand what it's
doing, and what it isn't.

"There's a couple of analysts on the Jupiter Research staff who think this
is overstepping a line no company should cross," said Joe Laszlo, a senior
analyst with the company, which is owned by the parent of this publication.
"Others, and I'm in this group, feel that as long as they make it clear
what they're doing and the user gets free e-mail and a lot of storage, the
cost you pay is the ads adjacent to the e-mails you receive."

Jordana Beebe of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, agrees with Laszlo that
disclosure is key. "Larger storage capacity and ability to send and receive
bigger files may be worth less privacy to some consumers. But they need to
know that tradeoff is occurring," she said. Like Dixon and Hoofnagle, Beebe
said Google should clarify whether it will combine information on IP
addresses and cookies with user names.





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