Google has been very clear that it will not violate a person’s privacy and disclose content of email stored on its Gmail service to third parties except under very specific circumstances. This includes complying with a law. However there is an alarming clause in its privacy policy that says:

“We do not disclose your personally identifying information to third parties unless we believe we are required to do so by law or have a good faith belief that such access, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to… satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request.” That last part — governmental request — is unclear and I’d like to see Google clarify what that means.

Personal I think its sloppy wording. I don’t think they’d turn over your email to the government’s tax department for example without a subpoena. But I would like to hear that defined in a clear statement from their executive.

This page might be helpful: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/more.html if you’re interested in examine their policy for yourself.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 24th, 2005 at 9:10 am and is filed under Security stuff, Call for Help 2.0, Tech News, Everything. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.