A large part of your online life revolves around your email address. It acts as a central hub for almost everything you do: Travel documents and itineraries arrive there, it’s home to receipts for all your Amazon purchases, it acts as a recovery mechanism for the sites and apps you sign up for and then forget your login details. And, of course, there are all the emails you send.
WIRED UK
This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.
Your inbox holds plenty of private information—and in many cases secrets—that when pieced together can build up a profile of your interests, movements, and social connections. But email privacy can often be neglected. The threats faced depend on who you are. For businesses, phishing attacks launched through emails can lead to entire corporate networks being compromised. But for individuals there are privacy concerns beyond working out if your account has been hacked.
First, data collection. While Gmail doesn’t scan the content of your emails to collect information for its advertising machines, data from your Google account is used to serve ads in your Gmail inbox. (Most recently Google started putting shopping ads in your inbox.)
Google can also use some information received in your inbox to help with other services it provides. For instance, flight bookings can automatically be added to your calendar; local maps for areas you’re traveling to, based on hotel bookings, ..
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