 has announced plans to stop scanning personal emails to target users with personal ads. Google revealed the changes in a blog pub){kind=link}
Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has announced plans to stop scanning personal emails to target users with personal ads.
Google revealed the changes in a blog published last week, welcomed by privacy campaigners.
“G Suite’s Gmail is already not used as input for ads personalisation. Google has decided to follow suit later this year in our free consumer Gmail service. Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalisation after this change.” wrote Diane Greene, the senior vice president of Google Cloud.
Whilst the company was not reading any of the emails sent and received by Google Mail users, their end to scanning will reassure those who were put off.
“What we’re going to do is make it unambiguous,” Greene continued.
The removal of scanning for personalised adverts won’t mean the free version of Gmail will be without adverts, however. Google will continue to advertise these adverts will be targeted in the same way as other services on Googles, such as information from other searches, browsing activity, and even physical location.
The scans have been of controversy since first announced, with the UK-based campaign group Privacy International hoping to block the scans once it became apparent they counted towards the cost of signing up.
“When they first came up with the dangerous idea of monetising the content of our communications, Privacy International warned Google against setting the precedent of breaking the confidentiality of messages for the sake of additional income,” the charity’s executive director Dr Gus Hosein said.
“Of course they can now take this decision after they have consolidated their position in the marketplace as the aggregator of nearly all the data on internet usage, aside from the other giant, Facebook.”
“The reality is that what you choose to say over email to another human being isn’t as interesting for exploitation as the data you have no control over – Google would rather exploit your data by tracking you across the internet, across their mobile operating system, their search engine, their apps, their smart devices, and likely some day soon, their car, amongst a myriad of other services that they dominate through the exploitation of our data.”