EPIC - Google to End Email Content Scanning

Google to End Email Content Scanning

After a decade of controversy, Google announced that it will stop scanning the content of all Gmail. Google stopped scanning e-mails for education in 2014 after a lawsuit charged that it violated wiretap laws. Google faced similar allegations in many other cases in the United States and around the world. EPIC warned about Google's e-mail scanning practices back in 2005 and filed a complaint with the FTC in 2009 over the privacy risks in Google's insecure cloud computing services, including Gmail. In 2014, EPIC led a successful campaign to stop Google from scanning student emails for commercial advertising. Last year, EPIC filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a Massachusetts case, again objecting to Google's Gmail scanning. EPIC explained in 2005 that Google's email service undermined online privacy and prevented the adoption of important security methods, such as end-to-end encryption.