[Correction] Gmail can read your emails and attachments to power "smart features"
www.malwarebytes.com
Did you know that Gmail can use your emails and attachments for its smart features? Here's how to check your settings.
  • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    1521·
    6 months ago

    It’s not “Gmail can read your emails” … Gmail has been reading your emails for years.

      • Sims@lemmy.mlEnglish
        81·
        6 months ago

        I think they do that anyway… Well, I’m pretty sure, but your initiative/warning is 👍

    • foodandart@lemmy.zipEnglish
      11·
      6 months ago

      Yup. Kinda why I’ve been using my gmail account as image storage for the last 19 years, and nothing else, since I made it.

      That was stated from the get-go, that Google reserved the right to scan for potential ad-words in order to advertise a product you might have written about in a correspondence.

  • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    82·
    6 months ago

    How to opt out

    Opting out requires you to change settings in two places, so I’ve tried to make it as easy to follow as possible. Feel free to let me know in the comments if I missed anything.

    To fully opt out, you must turn off Gmail’s “Smart features” in two separate locations in your settings. Don’t miss one, or AI training may continue.

    Step 1: Turn off Smart Features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet settings

    Step 2: Turn off Google Workspace Smart Features

  • yaroto98@lemmy.worldEnglish
    48·
    6 months ago

    There’s a reason it’s enabled by default. So, it automatically has permissions to learn off ~20 years of emails before a handful of people opt-out.

    Assuming they even honor the opt-out flag at all. They have a history of conveniently ignoring those.

  • Samsy@lemmy.mlEnglish
    422·
    6 months ago

    These opt-out and opt-in rules should be punishable by law. I mean its the nature of humanity. We don’t care.

    A brief comparison: in Germany, you are only an organ donor if you opt in. In France, you are always an organ donor unless you opt out. Guess which country has more donors.

    • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
      20·
      6 months ago

      Honestly I don’t get how AI isn’t rolling backwards already. Image sites are burried in AI slop. Social media posts are burried in AI slop, and now e-mails, that were probably written by AIs. How is AI even remotely improving right now, when obviously 90% of any new training data it’s getting, was generated by the last generation of AI.

      • dan@upvote.auEnglish
        14·
        6 months ago

        Companies that build large LLMs have already said that this is becoming a problem. They’re running out of high-quality human-written content to train their models.

        Google paid Reddit to get access to their data to train their models, which is probably why their AI can be a bit dumb at times (and of course, the users that actually contributed the content don’t get any of that money)

      • [email protected]@lemmy.zipEnglish
        10·
        6 months ago

        From what I’ve been hearing, AI has indeed been getting worse, not better. I think I read this in relation to ChatGPT 5 compared to previous models.

  • rocci@lemmy.mlEnglish
    19·
    6 months ago

    And oh by the way, opting out turns off the auto-categorization and fills your inbox with spam.

    How the fuck do I switch from this stupid service?

      • Bloefz@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        The problem I’ve been seeing with email on my own domain is that some services refuse it, saying “please enter a real email address” 🤬 some others just silently refuse to send a confirmation code so I can’t register either (I think tinder did this). Especially the “not a real email address” really pissed me off.

        And with proton I got “Anonimisation services are forbidden” once at least.

        I forget which services, but it’s Hella annoying…

        The marketshare of Google and Microsoft on email is really becoming a problem.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      101·
      6 months ago

      If you’re not already doing so, you probably should use a 3rd party client that can connect to Gmail and filter out spam.

      If you tell us what platforms you use, we can probably provide some recommendations of stuff to explore.

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      ohhh I didn’t notice that, well this is enough to finally push me to actually leave. I kept delaying it

    • jali67@lemmy.zipEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      I really like Gmaps and YouTube though. That is really the main things I struggle getting rid of. Maps not so much for navigation but for exploring local businesses and YouTube is a monopoly.

      • BunScientist@lemmy.zipEnglish
        8·
        5 months ago

        You can use youtube without being logged in (and there are alternate frontends too, but they all have issues whenever google decides to break stuff).

        If you want to follow people you can actually do it without an account through RSS

      • sqgl@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        This week I noticed Google and gmaps rubbi6ng slowly on a non-Chrome browser. Unusable level of slow.

  • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    15·
    5 months ago

    I find it funny when they read my school emails and then accuse themselves of phishing after they accuse me of holding malware in my drive, icing on the cake really, I won’t even need this email in a month.

    That said though, just like others have mentioned, making users opt out of getting all the data wringed out of their account isn’t the most ethical strategy and frankly it’s a bit over the top.

    They already scan everything from your Google drive to your YouTube recommended, google news feed, docs files, and just you browsing and using that as data for advertising and their AI. I don’t think emails are the best source of personalised information nor would assist in training new Gemini models unless they want to build an email spam bot.

  • KaChilde@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    12·
    5 months ago

    Step 3: Verify if both are off

    • Make sure both toggles remain off.
    • Refresh your Gmail app or sign out and back in to confirm changes.

    How fucking ridiculous is it that this needs to be a step? If I tell a company to keep its grubby hands out of my shit, that should be final. No need to double check that google didn’t do a little oopsie-woopsie and leave those options on as a little treat for later.

    Every other day there is something like this, and I am getting real fucking tired.

  • el_abuelo@programming.devEnglish
    10·
    5 months ago

    Okay sounds probably gonna get crucified for not reading this…but if the headline is true and combined with the fact that LLMs have been known to expose training data, this seems to introduce a non-zero chance that my personal emails are going to get shown to strangers…

    • Zanathos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      5 months ago

      I’ve already found recent emails in my gmail account for right-leaning news sources I’ve had to opt out of. I’ve been lax on my gmail management until last year I went on a major cleanup spree, so I know these new emails were automatically added somehow, and this article likely explains it.

  • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    6 months ago

    Plot twist: they can, and will, do it even if you opt out. The only thing that change is that you won’t get anything out of it. Not that it would have been a significant return to begin with.

    • jali67@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      5 months ago

      Yeah these corporations do not care at all and the lawsuits they get are almost always a joke

        • jali67@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          NYT is basically a corporation with their billionaire owners. They’ve allowed some pretty shitty people to write opinion articles. Although, they still have some pretty great journalism overall.

          • Bloefz@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            5 months ago

            I know, but at least they are making a case which most news outlets probably would but don’t have the means for a long legal fight. They might get some precedent out of this from which the whole news industry will benefit.

            I don’t think AI training should ever be fair use. These companies are making billions of other people’s work and giving nothing back.

            • jali67@lemmy.zipEnglish
              1·
              5 months ago

              Yeah I agree with you on the AI issue. It’s funny because they all try to pander like it’s supposed to benefit us but on Wall Street and to investors, their tone is all about how it disrupt regular people in the name of profit. So ridiculous lol

    • sunbeam60@feddit.ukEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      Not if you trust your data to a company that makes money from selling said data to advertising companies.

      • Ocean@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        Companies make a little money selling your information. It is better to assume that any information you hand over to a private entity will be sold. It doesn’t matter if they say that it isn’t going to be at that time. Should they ever fold your information goes to the first bidder.

  • hansolo@lemmy.todayEnglish
    112·
    6 months ago

    Y’all do realize that Gmail has been reading your emails and attachments from the start, right?

    Someone please explain why doing that for ads isn’t terrible, but how this crosses the line?

    The reasons not to trust Google are as old and numerous as the trees.

  • unpossum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    91·
    6 months ago

    The Google page the article links to pretty explicitly states that data will not be used for training. Isn’t this just the cross-google integration that lets calendar add events from mail?