Think your Gmail is private? You might want to think again, as Google is reportedly scanning your Gmail messages for purchases, which it stores in your account.
Last week, a user posted on Reddit what he discovered when he opened his Google Account Purchases page. His page contained all the purchases he made from Amazon and other online stores, even though they don't use Google Pay.
Inside the Purchases page, there were all the purchases he made from online services like Dominos, Steam, Amazon, Adidas and many more. It is worth mentioning once again that the Reddit user was not using Google Pay.
How is this possible? Quite simply. Google analyzes Gmail messages to identify purchase receipts, which it then extracts and stores.
BleepingComputer contacted Google about the matter, and company executives confirmed that the information came from Gmail messages.
They stated that this is done to help their users find their data easily and that they do not use any of this information to serve ads.
“To make it easy for you to view and track your purchases, reservations, and subscriptions in one place, we’ve created a private destination that only you can see. You can delete this information at any time. We don’t use any information from your Gmail messages to show you ads, and that includes the receipts and email confirmations that appear on the Purchases page.”
While they may not use this information to show you ads, do they use it for anything else? Google didn’t provide an answer to this question.
The company said we can delete this data at any time, but didn't mention how difficult it is.
Instead of having a single setting that allows control over how this data is stored, you have to delete each purchase individually. (See images above).
______________________
- Translate Man Firefox add-on web page translation
- TeamViewer: Chinese hackers behind breach
- Anonymous: the end of hacktivism
