Ooh! Shiny!

[trinityvixen]

Gmail has it so you can send and receive mail through it from your other e-mail addresses. Not just gmail ones neither! Shiny! No more AOL.com for me!

The Vixen likes.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Is that so? Well, I guess they already know about that massive amount of fanfiction I review at that account, so I better be careful about who I piss off.

Seriously, though, what are they keeping track of? Why do they need to do that? What is this talk of which you speak?

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

Google keeps every piece of information it comes across. Forever. Every email you send or recieve gets stored somewhere for future archaeologists. On the other hand, Google is probably the least evil company ever. I wouldn't trust anyone with my personal data more than them. That includes the government, banks and insurance and health providers, which between them probably know everything about me. The thing is, they keep the data, but there's essentially no way for a human to attach some random email you deleted to your name or anything else about you without a serious restructuring of the way the software is designed. It's supposed to be hard to get at. The only reason the computers can find out what emails you send and recieve is to target ads at you through that bar on the side.

Basically, I wouldn't worry.

I didn't know about this feature. I'm going to set it up to work with my school email, I think.

[cagexxx.livejournal.com]

This article is obviously very one-sided, but it sums up my feelings pretty well:

http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html

I think they're getting too big. I think it's really scary how when Google releases anything, millions of people jump onto it and want their entire internet (and now desktop!) experience to be google-ized. Even if they're not evil now (and I think they probably are), there's virtually no way that they can stay this way.

There's just too much room for doubt in their privacy policies and such. The fact that Google is in bed with Firefox skeeves me out, too, as does the fact that you can't stop the default Google search in Firefox from reporting information about your web browser.

Call it instinct, I guess. *shrug*

You people enjoy your google. I'll keep using it for web searches and maps (maybe e-mail someday, but probably not) while I clear my cookies every few days.

[slackwench.livejournal.com]

And yet you run Windows, which (if you watch the packets carefully) sends unidentified packets off to some server at MS seemingly randomly. Noone knows what they are, and MS just claims they're a glitch (which happens to exist in every version of Windows...).

[cagexxx.livejournal.com]

Wow, really? I didn't know about that. I'm having trouble finding any information on it (with google searches, haha lol!), so can you send me a link with details or something? Do firewalls block those packets, or is it one of those "Generic Host Process is trying to connect" messages that you're never quite sure what to do with?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It seems to me the threat of governments looking over our shoulder/e-mail is mainly a fault of our current laws on electronic data. That google accumulates the information makes it one more outlet for the gvmt to go to when they want to raid stuffs.

Clearing cookies is a good idea anyway, I should do it more regularly.