FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
Media Contacts:
|
Pam Dixon, Executive Director,
World Privacy Forum
Office: (760) 436-2489 pdixon@worldprivacyforum.org
www.worldprivacyforum.org
|
Beth Givens, Director,
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
Phone: (619) 298- 3396
bgivens@privacyrights.org
www.privacyrights.org
|
Thirty One Privacy
and Civil Liberties
Organizations Urge Google to Suspend Gmail
San Diego, CA, April 6, 2004
-- The World Privacy Forum and 30 other privacy and civil liberties
organizations have written a letter calling upon Google to suspend
its Gmail service until the privacy issues are adequately addressed.
The letter also calls upon Google to clarify its written information
policies regarding data retention and data sharing among its business
units.
The 28 organizations are voicing
their concerns about Google's plan to scan the text of all incoming
messages for the purposes of ad placement, noting that the scanning
of confidential email for inserting third party ad content violates
the implicit trust of an email service provider. The scanning
creates lower expectations of privacy in the email medium and
may establish dangerous precedents.
Other concerns include the unlimited
period for data retention that Google's current policies allow,
and the potential for unintended secondary uses of the information
Gmail will collect and store.
Privacy
Council Open Letter to Google
Google's Press Release
Announcing Gmail
Google
Addresses Privacy Concerns Head-On
Email Tutorial Index
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