Google has updated its privacy policy to allow personal information from Gmail, Google Photos, and Drive to potentially be used for targeted advertising.

Google has updated its privacy policy to allow personal information from Gmail, Google Photos, and Drive to potentially be used for targeted advertising, raising new questions about how the company handles users’ private data.

The change, which took effect on October 16, introduces a significant exception to Google’s previous promise that it would not use content from these services to personalize advertisements.

As first spotted by Android Authority, the updated policy specifically affects users who connect their personal information to Google’s AI-powered services, including Search and Gemini.

  • joeschmoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    39 minutes ago

    Fucking hell. Time to take all the photos down. It’s been at least a decade since a photo has been uploaded there, because I knew Google can’t be trusted and I disabled the automatic upload, just hadn’t taken the already uploaded images down. On top of that, for months I have been in the process of moving off gmail to Zoho Mail. Fuck Google.

  • mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    60 minutes ago

    Moving to Ente? Or moving to Proton family? Mixed of both?

    I also found out the reported Photos usage via Google profile is way undercounted. It shows i have 30 GB of photos. I just requested a checkout of all Photos and well… i need to download 120GB…

  • kazerniel@quokk.auEnglish
    6·
    4 hours ago

    According to the article, it is off by default:

    According to Google’s updated privacy policy, the company still promises not to use Gmail, Drive, or Google Photos content for targeted advertising by default.

    However, the policy now includes an important exception. Google says that restriction no longer necessarily applies “unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads.”

    The change is connected to Google’s Personal Intelligence features, which allow services like Search and Gemini to access information from connected apps to provide more relevant recommendations.

    For example, someone could give Google access to their Gmail inbox to help organize travel plans or find restaurant recommendations near a hotel reservation.

    Under the updated policy, information shared for those personalized experiences could also be used to determine which advertisements appear.

    • Jiral@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      3 hours ago

      In the US you can hide that opt-in in unreadable terms, can’t you? In the EU that will be harder though as there the opt-in has to be easily readable and obvious to the regular user, as well as feature an option to decline without making things non-functional that do not need that for their very functioning.

      In any case, people will be surprised how inshittified AI will be able to become once they have done the same they have done to regular search.

  • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
    12·
    5 hours ago

    Google using Gmail to target ads has been a thing since the launch, I remember the articles about it back in the day, and still got a Gmail since it was still soo much better than alternatives like Hotmail.

  • then_three_more@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    5 hours ago

    Is this only some countries? I thought they legally had to email to inform you of changes to these policies where I live b

  • NathanRanch@lemmy.zipEnglish
    5·
    5 hours ago

    I like it for the storage, might encrypt my data on there to be safe. Honestly someone could make am app for that, but it wouldn’t make it onto the store 😮‍💨

  • Pratai@piefed.caEnglish
    5·
    6 hours ago

    So…. What’s a decent email client? This will be the last of the google services I have and it’s time to end it.

    • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
      6·
      4 hours ago

      Proton if you want a clean UI, more fancy features, aliasing, etc.

      Tuta if you want just a simple email, don’t care if the UI is a little chunky, and a slightly cheaper price.

        • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          4 hours ago

          Both Tuta and Proton have iOS apps of their own.

          I don’t believe either can be used inside the native iPhone Mail app, since they use encryption schemes, which aren’t standard in any commonly used spec for mail apps, so no regularly available mail app can act as a frontend for Proton/Tuta, because no regularly available mail app “speaks” their encryption. (though on PC, Proton does have a Bridge application that can essentially perform the job of a translator in that case, but again, only for PC clients)

    • q7mJI7tk1@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      I tried all the usual ones recommended, Proton, Tuta etc, but following a recommendation from another Lemmy use, I’ve found Fastmail to give the best results. 60GB of email storage as well.

    • Joelk111@lemmy.worldEnglish
      423·
      5 hours ago

      What sort of lemmy-ass statement is this? Of course there are sane people using Gmail.

    • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      4 hours ago

      I switched to tuta.com since a couple years back, it’s been pretty good. The user experience is worse, but it’s a good trade-off.

      But of course it’ll take many years until I’m able to get rid of my Gmail account completely. Especially since I’m using a Google phone, and my car needs a Google account since its OS is based on/integrated with Android. And some websites don’t allow changing your email address, so I dunno what to do about those.