Can Google Read Your Emails Federal Law
I was chatting with a friend the other day, a CTO of a sizable financial services business firm, when the subject of Google's trustworthiness came upwards. He said he trusted Gmail to be secure because, "Google doesn't read your email." Being a paranoid tech guy, I challenged his assertion.
That Google has the ability to read your electronic mail should be beyond dispute. Google's servers have access to all your messages in plaintext form. They render your email for display in your browser. They index all your information to be able to search it. Everything you shop or process on Google servers is bachelor to them.
The G Suite Agreement makes all this abundantly articulate:
- Google may transfer, shop and process Customer Data in the United states or whatever other country in which Google or its agents maintain facilities. Past using the Services, Customer consents to this transfer, processing and storage of Customer Data.
My friend may take been confused past Google's promise not to display ad to a paying G Suite customer:
- Google will non process Client Information for Advertizing purposes or serve Advertising in the Services.
Brand no mistake, Google can and does read your email. And this should cause concerns about security and privacy.
Security. Because Googles servers have access to all of your organisation'southward emails, an aggressor that's able to penetrate these servers tin also get all of your data. No software platform is perfect, and it'due south certainly plausible that an attacker can penetrate fifty-fifty Google's defenses. And Grand Suite can be managed past administrators, who besides can admission all your data. So if your administrator is compromised, y'all're at chance.
Privacy. Google is known to collect vast amounts of data about each user, and there's no reason to believe One thousand Suite services are exempt. There may be unintended consequences of this data drove. For example, a judge may issue a subpoena to Google to divulge customer emails, and Google would accept no option but to comply. The owner of this data might not even know nigh it. But if the data in question were a physical document, the subpoena would be delivered to its owner, who would accept the opportunity to object to the data collection if it were unwarranted.
End-to-terminate encryption would address many of these security and privacy bug. If Yard Suite data were encrypted on clients and servers were merely repositories of encrypted data, and so Google itself wouldn't exist able to read your letters. Facebook'due south WhatsApp works this way. As he puts it, "Nobody, not even Facebook, should be able to encounter your private messages."
Google'due south "Don't Be Evil" motto isn't enough to cause you to trust Google.
I'm a paranoid tech guy. I care a lot about privacy and information security. I likewise happen to work at PreVeil, which uses stop-to-end encryption with no fundamental signal of attack to secure email and files. Y'all can achieve me at [email protected].
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Contempo Manufactures Past Author
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from PreVeil authored past Paranoid Tech Guy. Read the original mail at: https://www.preveil.com/weblog/does-google-read-your-email/
Source: https://securityboulevard.com/2019/11/does-google-read-your-email/#:~:text=That%20Google%20has%20the%20ability,be%20able%20to%20search%20it.