Confidentiality and Gmail

This morning I was reading a blog post written by Marcela Jenney, encouraging freelancers to get their own web domain. Marcela says that domain names build credibility and create a sense of professionalism. I agree 100% with that, in fact I’ve had my own domain for years. But there is another reason why we should have our own web domains. A very important reason. These days it may be the most important reason of all.

If you have a Google account, you must have received an e-mail from Google describing the changes to their privacy policy, which will take effect on March 1, 2012. According to the e-mail, the text of which can also be found on http://www.google.com/policies/,

We [Google] are getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.

This stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service now. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.

I agree with them, this stuff matters. It matters a lot. The single privacy policy that will cover multiple products and features as of March 1st states the following:
  

Your Content in our Services

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps).

http://www.google.com/policies/terms/

I’ve already talked about the “service” called Google Translate in a prior post and explained why we should not be uploading onto it the documents we are to translate. But that was only one “service”. (I do need to put it in quotes because otherwise I’d have to call this particular application a disservice.)
  
The big change made by Google now is that this privacy policy will be covering ALL of the services offered by Google. Now do you agree that Gmail is one of those services? (No quotes here, Gmail is indeed a service, a great one, at least up till now.) This means that the above privacy policy applies to Gmail. Hence when you upload or otherwise submit content to Gmail, you give Google (and those [they] work with) a worldwide license to use, […] publish, publicly display and distribute such content. I have read this statement at least 5 times trying to convince myself that I misunderstood, that I missed something, that Google cannot possibly be saying or doing this. But the way this policy is written, it says that Google can use the content of our e-mails and publish it, distribute it, use it to improve its services. As to the first two lines, the statement that “what belongs to you stays yours” is pretty useless, because right after that they say that they can use content that is ours. In other words, the policy says that our stuff is ours but we grant Google a license to use it and publish it and share it. I’ve been reading many online articles on this matter and so far they all confirm this. Can you say for sure that you never included in your e-mails any private information that you don’t want the world to see? Credit card information? Passwords? Received password-confirmation e-mails? Your home address? Your social security number? Your negotiations and agreements with your clients? Attachments with confidential documents that you translated? Your invoices? So Google can use our e-mails along with our translations to improve Google Translate, but this is really nothing compared to the damage that can be done if that information is made public. Maybe Google itself remains true to its motto not to be evil, but it certainly facilitates people to do evil, and with our private information suddenly becoming public, you don’t even need to be a hacker to do evil. Confidential information is offered to everyone on a silver platter.
  
So get your own web domain. Look for a web-hosting service that also offers e-mail hosting and use it for your professional website and for e-mails. I don’t know if Google plans to use e-mails sent or received before March 1st of 2012. The privacy policy doesn’t mention anything about that. We don’t really know whether they plan to use e-mails at all, but unless they state explicitly in their privacy policy that Gmail is excluded from the services covered by the policy, I suggest we play it safe. And although we may not be able to do anything about past e-mails, we can do something about future ones. Buy your own domain, they are very cheap nowadays. And buy it from a good hosting service. I use hostmonster because when I was planning to set up my own website I did some research and hostmonster seemed to be one of the most user-friendly and great value-for-money options with really good user feedback, but there are plenty of other options out there (I’m just mentioning my own in case you have no idea where to start and would like a recommendation). As a self-employed professional, having your own web domain shows that you take your business seriously and invest in it, it does contribute to your credibility, and it lets you have some control over the information you exchange via e-mail with your clients and colleagues.
  

NB: I highly recommend reading these two related articles:

Google knows too much about you (from CNN.com)

What Google knows about you (from ComputerWorld.com)

3 thoughts on “Confidentiality and Gmail”

  1. Hello Maria,

    I am in the process of buying a domain for my blog/site. Since I want to use an email linked to this domain I thought maybe the easy way for me is just get a domain with wordpress (where my blog currently is hosted) and then link the domain to gmail. I guess that would be an issue too, huh? I have asked a few friends who understand about this and they advised me to get a separate domain and set things separately. I do not know how to do this and I hate bothering them to help me out. They say it is "simple" but I do not want to spend a lot of time trying to figure it out how to do this.

    Anyhow, I was wondering if you could recommend a few places where I can buy the domain and email domain which is not complicated to set up? By the way, I am in Brazil, but I I would buy a '.com' one.

    Super thanks for this helpful post!!!

    Best
    Simone

  2. Hi Simone,
    I agree with your friends. 🙂 I think it's a good idea to get a separate website and an e-mail with your own domain. Then if you want you can link your existing blog to your website.

    First of all you need to look for a web-hosting service, meaning a space where you can store your website. You also have to get a domain name. You don't have to do this separately; web-hosting services often give you deals for domain-name purchase, and some have easy-to-use interfaces where you can check whether the domain name you want is taken or not, and you can purchase it through them.

    Before you buy a web-hosting service, read the customer reviews; they usually say whether a service is reliable, user-friendly, how good the customer service is, etc. Here are a couple of websites with reviews: http://www.webhostingsearch.com/reviews.php, http://www.consumer-rankings.com/hosting/.

    Like I said, I'm very happy with hostmonster, it gives me unlimited space, unlimited e-mail accounts (so I can have, for example, info AT fresneltranslations.com, maria AT fresneltranslations.com, and assign an e-mail address to each person on my team), and free domain forever; but it's not the cheapest option, I pay approx. $9 per month; there are options for 3 and 4 dollars a month, but again, read the reviews to see how good they are.

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