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.
Reminder that Immich has basically all the features of Google Photos and more, and you can migrate fairly easily by doing a Google Takeout.
https://www.bigiron.cc/guides/migrating-google-photos-to-immich-via-takeout
❤️ You rock 🫶
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.
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.
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 😮💨
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.
They stopped doing that in 2017. Until now.
Is this only some countries? I thought they legally had to email to inform you of changes to these policies where I live b
Any sane person really still using Gmail?!
What sort of lemmy-ass statement is this? Of course there are sane people using Gmail.
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.
“
Don’tBe Evil”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.
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.
Can vouch for Tuta, exactly as you described it 😂
Any of them I can set up on my mail app on an iPhone?
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)
I like tutamail and I’ll happily recommend it :)
Is there an inbox wrapper I can use for gmail on android?
I know I know just switch to proton or whatever. I have, but sometimes I still get stuff from things I’ve connected to gmail that i I’ve forgotten about.
The gmail app on android is very ad heavy.
Just looking to access my gmail from a cleaner app.
The gmail app on android is very ad heavy.
Is it? Or is that just a US thing? Anyway get adguard, that should help.
Just set gmail to auto-forward all mail to the address you actually use.
Thunderbird
Do you just mean an email client? Then fairmail or thunderbird
If you already switched to proton, you can add Gmail to it, there’s an option to add it.
One thing to note on this is that after a week, Google told me that my account might be compromised, severed the link between Gmail and my Proton account, and forced me to log back in to my Google account on my computer.
I reconnected to Proton and it did it again a couple weeks later. Not sure if it’s fixed. (or working as intended)
Gmail Forwarding is the old feature that just forwards mail, and that seems to work fine without ever kicking you off, it’s only Gmail Connection (which allows sending emails from your Proton mail and having them send from your Gmail address) that’s done it for me so far.
Oh jesus christ, can’t we just be done with it at this point.
Yes you can!
Is protonmail the easiest switch from Gmail?
disroot and vivaldi is totally fine
I would say if all you care about is having a nice looking, fully-featured, easy to use client, Proton is good, but if you really just need… an inbox with an email attached, then Tuta will be a little cheaper and just as private, just with less bells and whistles.
If you care about removing yourself from other services like calendars, cloud storage, password managers, etc, Proton is way better since it has the full suite.
For example, Proton supports auto-categorizing mail (e.g. newsletters, promotions, updates, transactions, etc), unlimited email aliases, a more modern UI, good integrations with Proton Drive and Proton Calendar if you decide to use those as well instead of Google Drive and Google Calendar, etc.
Tuta is more just an inbox that you can bother to sort as needed, comes with some aliases if you feel like it but probably not enough for every single online service you have, has a basic calendar, but doesn’t have any kind of integrated Drive access (is still in closed beta rn), and has a more… basic UI.
There are many options.
If you just want Yourname@ThatCompany.com there are several safe options.
If you want Yourname@Yourdamoan.com there are different safe options.
I use the second option through Fastmail.com.
Seen Fastmail recommended before. Have you had any issues signing up for an account, where the site/service doesn’t recognize your email address/domain as a valid input because it’s not well known and therefore blocked. Only reason I opened a gmail again 💀, while I’m trying Tuta atm.
I was with fastmail for years. It was great, and the most sophisticated I’ve seen if you want that fancy web ui feel.
However, I found the pricing to be egregious for larger mailboxes.
What about a good Google Photos alternative? Preferably something I can self-host. (Cloud storage is fine too, 1TB minimum, $15/mo max.) I’ve been wanting to DeGoogle for years but haven’t yet out of convenience.
Must have, no compromise features: A “Memories” feature works as good as Google’s, and a search box that lets me find images by describing what’s in them.
100% Immich. Really good UI, and the kinds of quality of life features you don’t normally find in smaller open source apps (auto face tagging, map based on coordinates of photos, built-in non-destructive editor, memories, etc)
The memories feature is mostly just “here’s photos/videos you took on this date”, but it doesn’t compile any sort of custom album based on a theme or place or anything like that. Not hard to do so yourself by just going to the map view and zooming into any location though.
As for image searching it does have that, and I’ve found it to be shockingly reliable even when I run it on just a Raspberry Pi. (though it can take a while to give you the result of your search if you’re on lower-end hardware like that)
Immich as recommended by a few others, and there’s also Nextcloud, but keep in mind Nextcloud is a little “heavier” in that it has more functions and features.
For example it can be used as a drive, calendar, contacts, notes, and photo alternative. Look into a addin for Nextcloud called memories that I personally like better than the native photo app.
I run both immich and Nextcloud, as well as a bunch of other alternatives to Google’s services.
Immich allows search for text and objects in the photos, using integrated free, local-run small AI models. I haven’t used a memories feature but I believe one may have rolled out in the last update.
Honestly, Immich is a free self-host option and is incredibly close to Google Photos. I think if you’re holding out for exactly identical feature parity, though, you may never be satisfied.
I don’t know exactly what’s in the Google Photos memories, but immich absolutely has a memories with pictures on that day in previous years.
IDK. A lot of people like to self-host immich.
I use and android phone so this would be my next step on de-googling.
It was a pretty straightforward switch. If you pay for Protonmail, you also get free email aliasing through pass mail, which is a massive privacy boost
Yes
So glad I switched to immich
I use Gmail at my workplace. They can go right ahead and use my emails that I check using Thunderbird to send me targeted ads if I ever use their search engine (I use DuckDuckGo).
The problem is not the targeted ads, it’s the data collection.
