The App Developers Sifting Through Your Gmail
Some third-party email providers that work with services like Gmail are letting their employees read customer emails to create new and optimized software tools, according to an article warning about third-party email apps and services published today by The Wall Street Journal.
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Google no longer scans the inboxes of Gmail users itself as of last year for privacy reasons, but it continues to allow third-party software developers to do so. Other email services, like Yahoo and Microsoft, are similarly impacted, providing access with user consent.
Return Path, Edison, and other developers of apps that work with Gmail and similar email services don’t appear to have misused customer information, but many customers are likely to be concerned about the fact that employees at some email companies are reading their emails. Many customers are also likely unaware they’re consenting to such practices when signing up for a third-party email app.
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Customers concerned with how their emails are handled by third-party apps should stick with first-party apps such as Gmail or Inbox by Gmail for Gmail users and/or take a close look at the app’s privacy policies and ask further questions about data usage.
Previously: Google Will Stop Reading Your E-mails for Gmail Ads.
Update (2018-07-05): Matt Birchler:
This is what Google displays when you ask to use another app (Microsoft Outlook in this case) to sign into your Google account. Google tells you as the first line item that Microsoft will be able to see your email.
"Customers concerned with how their emails are handled by third-party apps should stick with first-party apps such as Gmail".
And if the customer is concerned by the way Google handle data ? That's one of the reason I moved away from gmail to my own server for some times now.