Hey Google - Misconceptions about E-Mail?

E-mail is just wonderful. At least 90% of all messages received every day are SPAM and are usually taken care of quite automatically. The rest requires attention, well, at least glancing at them, sometimes reading or - even worse - responding. Responses create another piece of mail in our "Sent" folder.

Typical users keep accumulating sent and received messages in their mail system where they pile up. With pictures, documents and other attachments enclosed, we have to face gigabytes of new mail content every year. Given a proper search function, some even abuse mail servers as knowledge or document management systems by categorizing and sorting e-mail messages properly, so they may be easily found again later... but who does that really consistently and all the time? Yeah!

So, about two years ago, I decided to empty my primary business mailbox every weekend. Following the principle "do it, delegate it, or dump it", I started spending a couple of hours with sorting e-mails into project or topic folders, moving old folders into an archive subfolder, and generally cleaning up everything that was not needed. Attachments would be stored in the file system where they belong, together with other project or whatever documents. I find it generally hard to fit into a regular schedule, so it took me a while to really accomodate to this way of organizing e-mail. After a while, however, it worked. Ok, I admit, there are weeks when my mailboxes are not empty, and the next round of cleaning them up may take more than a couple of hours, but generally I manage to achieve the goal of an empty mailbox at least every other week.

That's the point where I go into Google mail to really delete everything from the "All Mail" folder, the Junk folder, and the waste bin. Google mail, however, tells me "You don't have any mail! Our servers are feeling unloved." Hey, Google, are you serious? I am taking care of reducing the burden on your servers and you tell me they feel unloved.

This is the point where the inquiring mind starts pondering about the deeper meaning of this message. What if emptying my mailbox is not at all what Google wants me to do? At some point, there was also a message asking who would want to delete any e-mail if you can have that much of storage? It seems, my perspective on a cluttered mailbox full of stuff is different from that of Google. I regard every message in my inbox as a task to sort it properly and take care of it. Google seems to think "the more, the better" and hopes I will keep storing gigabytes of messages in my mailbox. What if a full mailbox tells them much more about me and my interests than an empty one?

Other services like Instagram and Facebook, but also messenger platforms have been accumulating enormous amounts of images over the years. Pictures of all kinds of resolutions, quality and sizes. That's a huge field to try new machine learning algorithms on to classify pictures by identifying people, objects, landmarks and maybe even situations.

Back in 2014, Google introduced controversial new terms and conditions where the automated scanning of e-mail messages was explicitly mentioned. In the disguise of e-mail sorting helpers and anti-malware protection, this feature was introduced despite major concerns from privacy advocats. Enterprises having switched to Google mail services were not really happy about Google reading every piece of e-mail sent and received, esp. as encrypted e-mails cannot be handled properly inside Gmail. They require different tools or better even: different mail clients. In 2017, Google changed the policy again and promised to limit e-mail scanning to exclude the purpose of targeted advertisements.

The current terms of of service state that storing, sending or receiving content in Google services grants them a license. "The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones." and a bit further down, there is "Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored." That's far-reaching.

When I started using e-mail back in 1983 to send messages to people across the big pond, that was something special and unusual. Today, e-mail has become such a common tool we use without much thinking, and about which we make general assumptions of security and integrity. Terms of service like from Google (and other companies providing such services), should remind us that somebody (or something) is listening and the potential risks of exposing valuable business information in e-mail messages exist. We as users of Gmail and similar services do not know which conclusions are drawn from those scanned e-mails, and how this may influence "new services" somebody chooses not to call targeted advertising but news channels or other names suggesting a positive impact for users.

Google et al. capitalize on information obtained from their users in large quantities and great diversity. We should be aware of implications on not only privacy, but especially commercially confidential information that is transmitted over such channels.

Encryption has become the de-facto standard for accessing web sites. Https is everywhere and the fraction of the web that is available through encrypted channels crossed 50% last year. On the contrary, E-Mail encryption is still in its infancy, not technology-wise but adoption-wise. Depending on which statistics you believe, only 5-10% of all business e-mail messages have electronic signatures, and only 1-5% have encrypted contents.

This is scary. And we still don't know what Google, AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and other services conclude from our e-mails beyond security assessments. Think about it.