As we have already mentioned in our previous publication , Google recently helped in the arrest of a man who was distributing child abuse material through his email.
This news has created mixed feelings regarding Google's email scanning activities because, on the one hand, it's great that the man was finally caught, but on the other hand, there's a big question mark over the level of privacy protection for Gmail users.
Google responded that the scanning of messages is done for advertising purposes and that child abuse material is the only type of content detected during the scan.
This means that Google only checks emails for child abuse content and not other criminal activities, which the company does not report to authorities.
But how does Google identify and determine the nature of these images?
As is known, Google has been working with authorities and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for many years. Thus, a shared database of child abuse images has been created, where each photo has a unique identifier (hash).
When scanning emails, Google uses the aforementioned digital identifiers to compare images. This way, it can easily determine if an image has already been flagged as illegal, and notify law enforcement.
