For years, Benjamin Mako Hill has paid to host his own mail, as a measure to enhance his privacy and independence from big companies. But a bit of clever analysis of his stored mail reveals that despite this expense and effort, he is a Gmail user, because so many of his correspondents are Gmail users and store copies of his messages with Google. And thanks to an archaic US law, any message left on Gmail for more than six months can be requested by police without a warrant, as it is considered "abandoned."
Mako has posted the script he used to calculate how much of his correspondence ends up in Google's hands.
I host my own mail, too. I'm really looking forward to Mailpile, which should make this process a lot easier, and also make keeping all my mail encrypted simpler. Knowing that Google has a copy of my correspondence is a lot less worrisome if they can't read it (though it's still not an ideal situation).
The answer is surprisingly large. Despite the fact that I spend hundreds of dollars a year and hours of work to host my own email server, Google has about half of my personal email! Last year, Google delivered 57% of the emails in my inbox that I replied to. They have delivered more than a third of all the email I’ve replied to ever year since 2006 and more than half since 2010. On the upside, there is some indication that the proportion is going down. So far this year, only 51% of the emails I’ve replied to arrived from Google.
The numbers are higher than I imagined and reflect somewhat depressing news. They show how it’s complicated to think about privacy and autonomy for communication between parties. I’m not sure what to do except encourage others to consider, in the wake of the Snowden revelations and everything else, whether you really want Google to have all your email. And half of mine.
Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours
report this ad
As our Cory Doctorow reported previously, a previously unheard of hacker group calling themselves The Shadow Brokers announced this week it had stolen a trove of ready-to-use cyber weapons from The Equation Group (previously), an advanced cyberweapons dealer believed to be operating on behalf of, or within, the NSA. The Shadow Brokers are auctioning the […]
Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission has proposed issuing tracking-chips to all visitors to the country, which would allow the government to monitor the movements of all foreign nationals while in-country, in order to “locate them which will help if there are some tourists who overstay or run away (from police).”
This summer, DoJ Cybercrime Lab director Ovie Carroll presented at a Federal Judicial Seminar in San Diego, attended by over 100 US federal judges, where he recommended that the judges should use Tor — The Onion Router, subject of much handwringing and serious technological assaults from the US government, but which is also primarily funded […]
Mophie’s gadgets are reliable, minimalist, and stacked with all the right features. We use these two gadgets to keep our phones, tablets, e-readers, and other electronics charged.Recharge on-the-go with the Mophie Powerstation XL External BatteryThe Mophie Powerstation XL ($39.95) packs enough power to re-charge your phone eight times over. It has three levels of charging, so […]
Earlier this spring, Salesforce announced that Amazon Web Services (AWS) would be its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider. Salesforce developers and AWS developers are already in-demand and paid very well for their expertise, but this partnership opens up the opportunity to become an extremely valuable asset by mastering both. Below are two in-depth courses to help you start or progress […]
Whether you’re trying to start a quirky news blog, open a local Irish pub, or sell handmade furniture out of your garage, one thing’s for sure: your business is not going to succeed if you don’t build it a professional-looking website. That’s why we’re excited to share the WordPress Wizard Bundle.This is a bundle that includes 12 courses about […]
report this ad
