It's been a long time since I've taken the time to write an article, even though it's part of my resolutions. Since I want to achieve a few of them and I've definitely given up on the gym, I'm going to write!
It is a controversy caused by Gmail that gives me the opportunity to resume the feather the keyboard.
Facebook recently suffered an uproar over a massive data grab to Cambridge Analytica. When their questionnaire was set up in 2014, apps could request the right to retrieve information from friend profiles, which generated an exponential leakage of data. This event affected several tens of millions of users, throwing Facebook into the storm of data management.
This event shows to what extent access and data protection on the Internet is a sensitive subject and a major issue.
In this context, a recent article of the Wall Street Journal pointed out how common it is for a third-party application to read and analyze the content of messages on Gmail. While the WSJ didn't dig up any malicious actions like what may have happened with Facebook, raising the issue of data access prompted Gmail to publish an article on their blog, signed by Suzanne Frey, Director of Security, Trust and Privacy, explaining that Gmail offers all the necessary tools for users to manage access to their information as they see fit and reminding that access to data requested by third-party applications must be properly read before being validated.
About a year ago, Google had announced that it stopped scanning the content of emails to make targeted advertising while explaining its business model: Gmail does not use the content of emails to make targeted advertising nor to be paid via API accesses of developers; the objective of Gmail is to sell the services of its "G Suite" to companies.
This allows to understand why Google spends a lot of energy to demonstrate that they do not do anything with the data and reassure their customers: the companies.
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Google also explains that there is confusion in the understanding of the "automatic process" part they have implemented, which led some to think that Google was "reading" the emails. This is not the case, except in some specific cases where user consent is requested or for security reasons.
All this shows how data management is an extremely important topic. Most users are not aware that their personal information has a market value. The challenge now is to avoid misuse of this data. Unsolicited targeted advertising is a drift, but the use of personal data could lead to much bigger drifts.
And if the companies that host the data have the responsibility not to use it for the wrong purposes, the users remain the first responsible for what they do with their data!
