Enlarge / Microsoft’s description of Gmail scanning from the “Scroogled” ad campaign. (credit: Microsoft)
Google has announced it will no longer scan e-mail messages for ad personalization. Previously, in the consumer version of Gmail, Google’s computers would scan the contents of every e-mail message to determine a relevant ad to show. The scanning “feature” has been turned off for Google Apps for Education and GSuite accounts for some time, but now Google says that “consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change.”
In its blog post, Google says, “This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products. Ads shown are based on users’ settings. Users can change those settings at any time, including disabling ads personalization.” Presumably Google means Gmail will now honor the account-wide “Ads personalization” setting, which is available at https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/ads/authenticated.
Gmail’s scanning has long drawn ire from the tech community. It was the subject of a lawsuit alleging the the feature violated wiretapping and privacy laws, which eventually resulted in Google turning scanning off for students. Google has also been sued by non-Gmail users over the feature. That lawsuit claims that non-users that e-mail Gmail users should not have their e-mails scanned. The feature has also been the subject of Microsoft’s “Scroogled” campaign.
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