Another week, another data privacy brouhaha. A Wall Street Journal report on Monday reveals that third-party developers have been reading Gmail users\u2019 emails. According to the WSJ, a number of companies admitted their engineers have read thousands of email messages for reasons such as training machi\u2026<\/b>
\nAnother week, another data privacy brouhaha. A Wall Street Journal report on Monday reveals that third-party developers have been reading Gmail users\u2019 emails. According to the WSJ, a number of companies admitted their engineers have read thousands of email messages for reasons such as training machine learning systems.
The controversy stems from apps \u2014 such as third-party email clients and customer relationship management (CRM) software \u2014 that require access to Gmail accounts. Such integrations offer users a wide range of additional functionality, but with the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data scandal pushing data-sharing into the public consciousness, it was only a matter of time before Google came under closer scrutiny.
Suzanne Frey, director of security, trust, and privacy at Google Cloud, has now indirectly addressed some of the findings in the WSJ report, and her response is interesting in terms of both what it says and what it doesn\u2019t.
Titled \u201c Ensuring your security and privacy within Gmail,\u201d the blog post makes no reference to specific data privacy allegations, so anyone who had missed the WSJ report would probably be left wondering why the issue was even being discussed.
What Frey does say is that Google developers who request access to your Gmail messages must undergo a heavy vetting process. She explains that approval entails two core requirements: Apps must accurately represent themselves and be clear about how they are using the data, and they must only request relevant data.
\u201cWe review non-Google applications to make sure they continue to meet our policies, and suspend them when we are aware they do not,\u201d Frey noted.
Frey doesn\u2019t claim, however, that third-party developers are explicitly forbidden to read your emails. And once API access is granted, it would be difficult for Google to police such a policy anyway. A quick peek at Google\u2019s developer policy guidelines doesn\u2019t turn up any statement regarding developers\u2019 right to read users\u2019 emails, though presumably such activity should be expressly divulged in the developer\u2019s own privacy policy (which every Gmail user will obviously read\u2026 right?).
It\u2019s true that Google requires user consent for third-party access via permission screens, but, alas, many people likely just click \u201cAllow\u201d without fully appreciating what they\u2019re giving permission to. Of course, if you\u2019ve learned anything from recent data privacy shenanigans, you should now know to read everything before consenting. And this is something Google is quick to point out, too.
\u201cBefore a non-Google app is able to access your data, we show a permissions screen that clearly shows the types of data the app can access and how it can use that data,\u201d Frey added. \u201cWe strongly encourage you to review the permissions screen before granting access to any non-Google application.\u201d
But such permissions don\u2019t really make it clear that human eyes, as opposed to an automated algorithm, may in fact be reading your emails. There is no specific permission request that states: \u201c An engineer at our company may read your emails from time to time,\u201d an omission that raises questions around whether user consent is fully informed.
This is also reminiscent of the Cambridge Analytica debacle, whereby Facebook enabled access to its users\u2019 data for one reason, and the data was then harnessed for more nefarious purposes. It\u2019s just impossible to know for sure how Gmail users\u2019 data is actually being used.
There is nothing to suggest that any wrongdoing or data misuse has occurred as a result of Google giving outside developers access to users\u2019 emails. But the very fact that users\u2019 private messages can be read by a bunch of strangers, a practice we now know does happen, becomes all the more notable in light of data privacy scandals elsewhere.
While Google seemingly doesn\u2019t dispute the claim that third-party developers read your emails, the company is absolutely adamant that no one at Google itself does, and Frey reminded us that as of last year the company doesn\u2019t even serve you ads based on the content of your emails. \u201cTo be absolutely clear: No one at Google reads your Gmail, except in very specific cases where you ask us to and give consent, or where we need to for security purposes, such as investigating a bug or abuse,\u201d Frey continued.
Although Google didn\u2019t refer specifically to the WSJ report in its thinly veiled response yesterday, it\u2019s clear what the company is saying: You can trust us because we heavily vet third-party developers \u2014 who may well read your emails \u2014 and you gave us all permission for this to happen anyway.<\/p>\n

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