"Breathalyzer" for your email

Hi McSpocky

As a whole, I resent controls place on anything I consider personal when it comes to the web - especially email. To have ads placed in an email account that lean toward what the content of your emails are leaves me to believe there is no privacy insofar as email is concerned.

This email 'breathalyzer', though, could be a good thing as long as it is optional, I am in control of it, and the domain owner or unknown third party interests are not keeping track of it. This is the only thing I worry about with these types of innovations on the web. They start out as something innocuous and then develop into another way for the web masters to control us.

Pon

I agree with the thoughts here. Surprisingly I bought a new pair of slippers on line the other day and the very next day my headers started advertising slippers from all sorts of sales outlets. Coincidence? I think not and I believe that Google makes our browsing history available and consider that to be an invasion of my privacy, too! But............

I don't Google any more unless there is no alternative. There are plenty of ways to find information on the net without using the Google engine.

As far as your article Spocky, ROFLMAO!!! Excellent.

Mail Googles is an interesting feature, but it is hardly new. It has been out there since October 2008.

To have ads placed in an email account that lean toward what the content of your emails...

That's what Google is all about. You pay nothing for their services because you are their product. If you are uncomfortable with that, there are plenty of mail services for a nominal yearly fee that are free of advertising.

I believe that Google makes our browsing history available

They make it available to themselves. They are serving you ads from their own ad network. They are not making that available to other advertisers since that is how they make their money.

Hi Jay Butler

Mail Googles is an interesting feature, but it is hardly new. It has been out there since October 2008.

Many times we do not know things a service has because we just jump in and use it. Unless we find a reason to search out options, we do not necessarily know what a service offers.

I, personally, do not use Google, as I like to be able to separate my email into folders. I presently use free email that does not have ads in it.

They make it available to themselves. They are serving you ads from their own ad network. They are not making that available to other advertisers since that is how they make their money.

That is interesting to know. I was wondering how that worked insofar as ads are concerned. I still perfer no ads as it becomes really annoying and causes me to just get out of the email. But, thanks for this infomation Jay Butler.

Pon

Try FastMail.FM. They are owned by Opera now. I have used them for one of my accounts for years. They have an ad supported (taglines in outbound mail) free option and a few paid options that are very reasonably priced. Their spam filtering is at least as good as Google's.

and also email programs with pop3 accounts

I am no fan of POP3. Years ago, the primary reason for choosing FastMail was that they offered free IMAP access. Anymore, IMAP is a more popular feature since it is more smartphone friendly.

I'm going to check out FastMail to see how I like it.

I've used Eudora. It was pretty cool.