[thelist] is Gmail really 'too creepy' ? (was RE: archiving Horde webmail onto your PC)

Joel D Canfield joel at streamliine.com
Sun Aug 12 12:45:44 CDT 2007


Darrell King made the comment

> it's long passed the time when any of us can expect to keep 
> our private information to ourselves anyway.

I thought it was either interesting or ironic that when I worked at a
wireless startup seven years ago, upper management made the decision not
to archive our email so it couldn't come back to haunt anyone later.

Obviously they didn't think about the fact that, on occasion, emails
were actually sent *outside* the company . . .

I, too, long ago gave up pretending my private information was really
private. But in the business world, competitors, vendors, clients,
whoever it is you're rightly keeping information private from, probably
don't have the resources of Google or the federal government necessary
to categorize and search every email you've sent, or the contents of
your hard drive/wallet/head/whatever.

For business stuff, I think it makes sense to take reasonable
precautions. In my mind, refusing to send email to a Gmail address
doesn't fall into that category, but my opinion only counts in my
company. (However, if your company chooses not to do business with
anyone who has a Gmail address, please include my email address when you
tell them that; I'll be glad to work with them.)

joel



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