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Google warns that third party apps could be reading your gmail

by on04 July 2018


It is a dirty little secret 

Google has confirmed that private emails sent and received by Gmail users can sometimes be read by human third-party app developers, not just processed by machines.

This is because Google allows third-party apps which have permission to read emails. One of the makers of these apps said the whole thing was "common" and a "dirty secret".

Google said that the practice was not against its policies, although one security expert said it was "surprising" that Google allowed it.

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

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".

According to the Wall Street Journal, this permission sometimes allows employees of third-party apps to read users' emails.

While messages are typically processed by computer algorithms, the newspaper spoke to several companies where employees had read "thousands" of email messages.

Edison Software told the newspaper it had reviewed the emails of hundreds of users to build a new software feature.

Another outfit,  eDataSource said engineers had previously reviewed emails to improve its algorithms.

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.

Google said only companies that had been vetted could access messages, and only if users had "explicitly granted permission to access email".

Google added that Gmail users could visit the Security Check-up page to see which apps they had linked to their account,and revoke any they no longer wanted to share data with.

Last modified on 04 July 2018
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