Google has finally bid a goodbye to Gmail’s most controversial feature. It has announced that it will no longer scan e-mails of its users for the purpose of ad personalization. Google used to read people’s emails to show them relevant ads in the consumer version of Gmail. As per the search giant, this feature has been turned off in GSuite and Google Apps.
As per a blog published by Google, the company says that this change in policy brings Gmail in line with its other products. The advertising shown to a user will now be governed by his settings which can be changed as per his discretion. The user will have an option to disable ads personalization as well. This means, Gmail will now follow the ads personalization settings which is honoured by all other Google products.
The scanning of e-mails has long been a subject of controversy amongst the tech community. It even invited a lawsuit for the company which claimed that this function violated privacy laws and wiretapping. This resulted into Google shutting down this functionality for students. Google has also been sued by non-Gmail users who have contended that their mails should not be readable by the company. This objectionable practice has also been a part of Microsoft’s “Scroogled” campaign.
However, this does not mean that your mails are completely off-limits from Google’s prying mails. They will still be accessed for the purpose of filtering, indexing and spam and virus detection. As per Google’s executives, the change will be reflected later this year.
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