I have always expressed my distrust of Google and that is
especially true of their email services. It is my understanding
that Google stores archives of all email passing through its
system regardless of user preferences. So, consider: You place
an order with an online store, and they send you an email
confirming your purchase order. I have seen vendors who do not
strip out card numbers from confirmation emails. So, if you
haffen to be purchasing from one of these vendors and you are
using Google Mail as your email provider, Google then has full
details of not only your personal address and quite possibly
telephone number, but they also have an email in their archive
containing your credit or debit card number.
Happily, such cases are becoming more rare due to the fact that
more and more online vendors are becoming security conscious.
All the same, it makes me shudder when I think about the
possibilities of fraudulant practices owing to card details being
stored in the archives of a service provider.
Naturally, I'm not pointing the finger of blame at any specific
individual here. But I for one am extremely glad that I don't
use a public mail provider such as Google or Hotmail.
I always wonder why people feel the need to use these
facilities at all when, in the majority of cases, Internes
service providers usually opporate their own internal servers,
offering their users a far more secure means of email than Google
or Hotmail. Can somebody who uses one of these services explain
to me why they do so? Is it because they wish to segregate mail
and/or restrict the distribution of certain mail accounts to
different friends or providers? If so, why not just take up the
secondary mailbox services which the service provider also
usually offers, or else take out an account with another
privately run server, such as Mac Access or similar?
It is also worth considering the use of mail rules in most
modern clients. For instance, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Eudora,
Outlook Express, Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010 and 2013 all fully
support sophistiaated Email rules and junk filtering. So what is
the advantage of having numerous accounts in numerous places?
whilst it is certainly true that some mail providers do opperate
a mail quota policy, thereby restricting a user to various
amounts of either throughput or incoming mail, responsible use of
the Email system should avoid problems. For example, all Mailman
servers or compatible, (which accounts for over 98 percent of all
maib services which handle list traffic), have both websites
where you can custoomise or temporarily disable delivery of mail
without actually leaving the list, plus the fact that the email
mechanism itself can be used to manipulate the delivery of mail
traffic.
This is a pet subject for me, but I've waffled enough for the
time being.
----- Original Message -----
From: Dane Trethowan <[email protected]
To: "Techno-Chat ... Technology Enthusiasm!"
<[email protected]
Date sent: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 23:56:56 +1000
Subject: In Google we Trust
This is a must watch 4 Corners programme, saw it last night and
its repeated again on Saturday evening on ABC News 24.
You can of course watch the programme through ABC iView or get
further details, see videos and interviews at
<http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2013/09/09/3842009.htm
=======================================
The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and
worm-free
To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web
pages located at
http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat
You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at
either of the following websites:
http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html
Or:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]>
you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml>
---------------------------------------
