
Why Does Google Know Everything You’ve Bought on Amazon for the Past Six Years? - furcyd
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/opinion/google-purchases.html
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4d66ba06
A quote: "Scrolling through my Purchases, I couldn’t shake the most basic
questions: What good reason is there for Google to store six years of detailed
purchase information? Why can’t I delete it without deleting the emailed
receipts? Why aren’t there default time limits on how long information is
stored?"

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lern_too_spel
These are silly questions. If you don't delete the email, Google still knows
you made that purchase.

~~~
simongr3dal
There's a difference between the emails being stored on googles servers and
being available for data extraction by their algorithms, and them keeping the
extracted and indexed/queryable data stored as well as the emails.

~~~
lern_too_spel
There is no difference as far as what Google knows about you.

~~~
jjeaff
Well, deleting them would presumably avoid future, more invasive / nefarious
algorithms that are yet to be conceived of.

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Ill_ban_myself
So, you're telling me it's finally time to market this plug & play home email
server idea?

~~~
sp332
Better get started, your competition just launched 6 months ago:
[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/review-helm-
personal...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/review-helm-personal-
server-gets-email-self-hosting-almost-exactly-right/)

~~~
gsreenivas
yep - co-founder of Helm here

here's another review from Micah Lee at The Intercept for anyone who's
interested: [https://theintercept.com/2019/04/30/helm-email-
server/](https://theintercept.com/2019/04/30/helm-email-server/)

~~~
ikeyany
Why does Helm require users to have their location turned on? I use bluetooth
on Android all the time with my location kept off.

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guy_c
I think the only email services that are not going to mine your emails for
valuable data are paid services that have made strong commitments to privacy.
This was an interesting podcast interview with founder of Fastmail
[https://overcast.fm/+Hbyc810T0](https://overcast.fm/+Hbyc810T0)

~~~
username444
I was about to counter that self hosted is an option, but that doesn't
technically qualify as an "email service".

I'll note that the privacy centric services are only good as long as they're
still maintained by a founder... you trust. If things go sideways, they can
always be "acquired".

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villgax
Everybody should already migrate to something of their own domain or proton
mail or the likes.

~~~
rchaud
I have a couple of domains, one self-configured on Digital Ocean and one on
Bluehost. Bluehost has an 5-inbox email as part of the plan. Is it likely that
Bluehost can do the same kind of surveillance that Gmail can?

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PhantomGremlin
Yahoo Mail is perhaps better for privacy? Even if they strive to be just as
evil as Google, they are probably not nearly as competent.

In addition, Verizon, Yahoo's overlord, is probably run by "old school"
telecom management that doesn't fully appreciate the financial goldmine of
data mining.

~~~
thekyle
> probably not nearly as competent

I'm not sure this is a good argument for Yahoo! being better for privacy. Sure
it means they're less likely to keep track of your purchase metadata from
emails but it also means they're more likely to be hacked again and leak all
your emails to the world.

