New Email service hey.com

[Drakon]

I’ve been using Gmail since 2003/2004 and I haven’t noticed any ads. And I hate advertising!
(Every cloud has a silver lining and the lack of advertising in communist society must be theirs!)

$99 sounds like a lot. They’ve committed to never increase this?

 

[Brendan Burgess]

the lack of advertising in communist society must be theirs!

I would prefer evil capitalist advertising to Communist Social Realism pictures of Mao, Stalin and Hoxha.


Brendan

 

[Leo]

That wasn't what I was suggesting.

The almost macho "I don't care about privacy" is what I was commenting on.

This thread is about email providers, so let's stick to that context in reference to concerns on privacy. It's fair to say most people don't really care that Google or the other main providers harvest data to target ads in return for that service.

I admire your ability to blithely believe that facial recognition is accurate to any degree, never mind being regulated.

China uses this surveillance to an astonishing extent.

But don't imagine its not happening elsewhere.

I work in technology, part of my engineering degree 25 odd years ago was in image processing. So I don't 'blithely' believe that it's accurate, I've read the proof that it is.

Ans yes, China use it a lot, but I doubt many would be astonished that a totalitarian regime would use such a technology extensively. They'd hardly be investing quite so heavily if it wasn't accurate and effective.

I also have no issue with it being used elsewhere. It beats the low-tech system we use today putting CCTV stills on the TV and other platforms which are far more prone to false positives.

Lives have been destroyed by people being wrongly accused; poor quality forensics have left innocent people in prison for decades, some have lost their lives.

A so-called 'copy and paste' error saw Maurice McCabe wrongly accused of child abuse.

Have gross miscarriages of justice only come about since the dawn of facial recognition? The proper application of proven technology should help to reduce such cases.

With the McCabe case, it wasn't technology that implicated him, it was people. Indeed better application of technology would have made that error impossible.

 

[fidelcastro]

Adblocker doesn't work for gmail, the ad's are embedded within the mail clients itself, and how they make the money is based on your activity and who you are emailing.

Gmail reads every single one of your emails/stores and keeps this data forever, they then sell your data to private companies, check the targeted ads within gmail and you'll see how particular they are to you.

It's also not a matter of "i have nothing to hide" it's about keeping the nanny state at bay, otherwise where does it end.

I work in this area so maybe i just prefer to keep what i do private from large American corps rather then let them sell on my data.

Also there is nothing for free.

Nanny state ....which one eh? oh the one looking after our lives in this pandemic... Re wall st corporations, I agree 100% with you.

 

[Thirsty]

With the McCabe case, it wasn't technology that implicated him, it was people. Indeed better application of technology would have made that error impossible.

I would argue that it was the belief in the technology that allowed the smear campaign to be perpetrated.

granted this is off topic - but still a very important discussion. Perhaps as a moderator you might like to split the thread?

 

[Leo]

I would argue that is was the belief in the technology that allowed the smear campaign to be perpetrated.

granted this is off topic - but still a very important discussion. Perhaps as a moderator you might like to split the thread?

No, I believe this was a far more sinister campaign waged by individuals to discredit him. There is no suggestion that any piece of technology decided he was guilty of anything he was accused of. Every bad decision there was human made.

 

[Purple]

It's important to remember that if a company is offering you a service for free that means you are the product, not the customer.
That should inform our decisions in how we use social media, free email services etc.