Plus, didn't the courts rule that an ISP can read their customer's
emails? The wire-tap laws say you can't read communications in-transit,
but once it hits the server's NIC, it is no longer in transit.
May be sleazy, but it is legal.
Joe Johnson
From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf
Of
Patrick W Gilmore
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 12:56 PM
To: nanog@nanog.org
Cc: Patrick W Gilmore
Subject: "scanning" e-mail [WAS: 3 Free Gmail invites]>>
>> Joshua Brady wrote:
>>
>>> I've got 2 Gmail invites up for grabs for the first 2 to email me
>>> offlist.
>>>
>>
>> You know, I'm having trouble finding people that *don't* have
>> gmail.com
>> accounts already.
>
> Because G-mail scans INCOMING mail without the sender's consent, we
> will NEVER
> have a G-mail account and have considered blocking them. We actively
> discourage
> our clients from using this service. If you want to let a service
scan
> YOUR mail,
> it is your perogative, but you cannot give them permission to scan
MY
> mail to you.
I believe your last statement is factually incorrect. I absolutely
_can_ do anything I please with "your" e-mail you send to me. Not
only
that, I also believe I _may_ do it. You send me e-mail, the e-mail is
now mine. I can post it publicly, put it into a search engine, or
deleted it, and you have no say in the matter. Might not be polite,
but it certainly it not illegal. Don't like it, don't send me e-mail.
(Please.Google is simply indexing mail for their users as a service - an
unobtrusive, completely benign service just like virus checking or
procmail scripts which have been used for years. And it certainly
does
not require the consent of the sender. How I manage my mailbox is MY
business. You have exactly zero say over whether I let Google do it
or
Mail.app.
Perhaps you are worried that Google will read your e-mail? Or maybe
let others read it? Well, I hope you never send e-mail to anyone who
does not run their own dedicated mail server on their own dedicated
hardware and encrypt the SMTP session. 'Cause you are worried about
something that has been happening for decades. (Plus I think you
have