{"id":287293,"date":"2018-07-03T14:48:06","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T19:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/?p=287293"},"modified":"2018-07-03T14:48:06","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T19:48:06","slug":"gmail-messages-read-by-human-third-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/?p=287293","title":{"rendered":"Gmail messages ‘read by human third parties’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google has confirmed that private emails sent and received by Gmail users can sometimes be read by third-party app developers, not just machines.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Gmail<\/p>\n

People who have connected third-party apps to their accounts may have unwittingly given human staff permission to read their messages.<\/p>\n

One company told the Wall Street Journal<\/a> that the practice was “common” and a “dirty secret”.<\/p>\n

Google indicated that the practice was not against its policies.<\/p>\n

One security expert said it was “surprising” that Google allowed it.<\/p>\n

Gmail is the world’s most popular email service with 1.4 billion users.<\/p>\n

Google lets people connect their account to third-party email management tools, or services such as travel planning and price comparisons.<\/p>\n

When linking an account to an external service, people are asked to grant certain permissions – which often include the ability to “read, send, delete and manage your email”.<\/p>\n

\"Apps<\/p>\n

According to the Wall Street Journal, this permission sometimes allows employees of third-party apps to read users’ emails.<\/p>\n

‘Not asked permission’<\/h2>\n

While messages are typically processed by computer algorithms, the newspaper spoke to several companies where employees had read “thousands” of email messages.<\/p>\n

Edison Software told the newspaper it had reviewed the emails of hundreds of users to build a new software feature.<\/p>\n

Another firm – eDataSource Inc – said engineers had previously reviewed emails to improve its algorithms.<\/p>\n

The companies said they had not asked users for specific permission to read their Gmail messages, because the practice was covered by their user agreements.<\/p>\n

“You can spend weeks of your life reading terms and conditions,” said Prof Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey.<\/p>\n

“It might well be mentioned in there, but it’s not what you would think of as reasonable, for a human being in a third-party company to be able to read your emails.”<\/p>\n

Google said only companies that had been vetted could access messages, and only if users had “explicitly granted permission to access email”.<\/p>\n

It pointed the BBC to its developer policies, which state: “There should be no surprises for Google users: hidden features, services, or actions that are inconsistent with the marketed purpose of your application may lead Google to suspend your ability to access Google API Services.”<\/p>\n

It said Gmail users could visit the Security Check-up<\/a> page to see which apps they had linked to their account, and revoke any they no longer wanted to share data with.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/technology-44699263<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google has confirmed that private emails sent and received by Gmail users can sometimes be read by third-party app developers, not just machines. People who have connected third-party apps to their accounts may have unwittingly given human staff permission to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,13,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cloud","category-email","category-g-suite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=287293"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287297,"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287293\/revisions\/287297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itblog.lcisd.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}