Email Privacy

From MyWiki

Legal

• Additionally, communications stored for more than 180 days are exposed to [1] lower protections from law enforcement access; with Gmail, many such e-mails could be made easily available to police. [2]
• US CODE: Title 18, § 2703. Required disclosure of customer communications or records

GMail

• GMail Privacy Notice - highlights:
  • "We provide advertisers only aggregated non-personal information such as the number of times one of their ads was clicked. We do not sell, rent or otherwise share your personal information with any third parties except in the limited circumstances described in the Google Privacy Policy, such as when we believe we are required to do so by law."
  • "Google adheres to the US Safe Harbor privacy principles. For more information about the Safe Harbor framework or our registration, see the Department of Commerce's web site."
• More on Gmail and privacy
  • "Google does not share or reveal email content or personal information with third parties. Email messages remain strictly between the sender and intended recipients, even when only one of the parties is a Gmail user."
  • "Google keeps multiple backup copies of users' emails so that we can recover messages and restore accounts in case of errors or system failure, for some limited periods of time. Even if a message has been deleted or an account is no longer active, messages may remain on our backup systems for some limited period of time. This is standard practice in the email industry, which Gmail and other major webmail services follow in order to provide a reliable service for users. We will make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical."
• [Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) logo Gmail Privacy Page http://epic.org/privacy/gmail/faq.html]. August 18, 2004
• The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus, Tim O'Reilly, Apr. 16, 2004