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It’s not “Gmail can read your emails” … Gmail has been reading your emails for years.
Well, now it’s training LLMs on them.
I think they do that anyway… Well, I’m pretty sure, but your initiative/warning is 👍
Yup. Kinda why I’ve been using my gmail account as image storage for the last 19 years, and nothing else, since I made it.
That was stated from the get-go, that Google reserved the right to scan for potential ad-words in order to advertise a product you might have written about in a correspondence.
All digital transactions. Society isn’t free.
How to opt out
Opting out requires you to change settings in two places, so I’ve tried to make it as easy to follow as possible. Feel free to let me know in the comments if I missed anything.
To fully opt out, you must turn off Gmail’s “Smart features” in two separate locations in your settings. Don’t miss one, or AI training may continue.
Step 1: Turn off Smart Features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet settings
Step 2: Turn off Google Workspace Smart Features
Or: use a different email provider.
Annnnd dont send email to anyone who uses gmail, either…
Very very good point. Google’s ubiquity makes that very difficult.
These instructions are good for while you’re on the search and in the process of switching
When you do this it puts a permanent banner on the top of the screen. FUCK GOOGLE. DESTROY THEM.
There’s a reason it’s enabled by default. So, it automatically has permissions to learn off ~20 years of emails before a handful of people opt-out.
Assuming they even honor the opt-out flag at all. They have a history of conveniently ignoring those.
Don’tBe Evil.
These opt-out and opt-in rules should be punishable by law. I mean its the nature of humanity. We don’t care.
A brief comparison: in Germany, you are only an organ donor if you opt in. In France, you are always an organ donor unless you opt out. Guess which country has more donors.
TbF I feel like you cited one of the few instances where opt out is actually a very good thing.
I know and regret. But didnt change it because its a good example for both can be used to trick us into a direction.
The tyranny of the default .
I find it funny when they read my school emails and then accuse themselves of phishing after they accuse me of holding malware in my drive, icing on the cake really, I won’t even need this email in a month.
That said though, just like others have mentioned, making users opt out of getting all the data wringed out of their account isn’t the most ethical strategy and frankly it’s a bit over the top.
They already scan everything from your Google drive to your YouTube recommended, google news feed, docs files, and just you browsing and using that as data for advertising and their AI. I don’t think emails are the best source of personalised information nor would assist in training new Gemini models unless they want to build an email spam bot.
And oh by the way, opting out turns off the auto-categorization and fills your inbox with spam.
How the fuck do I switch from this stupid service?
I’ve been off Gmail for years and deleted all my Google accounts. Here’s how you can do it, too.
Step 1: Export your emails from Gmail into an EML file.
Step 2: Sign up for a new paid email provider: Tuta, Mailbox.org, Proton to name a few.
Step 3: Import your emails.
Done.
Optional Steps (that I recommend):
- Buy your own domain name (e.g., YourSurnameEmail.com)
- Set up your email provider to use your Custom Domain name. Or alternatively, sign up for a service like Addy.io and use your domain name there to create alias emails.
- Go to your domain name manager and add the settings your email provider tells you to use. This will enable your domain name to serve emails.
- Start sending and receiving emails using your own custom email address that belongs to you.
- Don’t like your email provider after a few years? Simply find a new one. Change your domain name settings to point your domain name to your new email provider. All your email addresses stay with you and you NEVER have to change email addresses again.
- Swap every email login you have to use a new alias email. For example, facebook123@yoursurname.com for Facebook, random.word123@yoursurname.com for some web site login, Steam123@yoursurname.com for Steam gaming, etc. Save all credentials to your password manager.
With this, you now have a unique email address for every single service, and all those alias email addresses forward your email to your actual email address. The benefit is that no one knows your real email address except you. Bye bye SPAM. When an alias email gets leaked or sold, you’ll know which company failed you. Simply swap to a different alias email, and disable the compromised alias - all SPAM stops.
The problem I’ve been seeing with email on my own domain is that some services refuse it, saying “please enter a real email address” 🤬 some others just silently refuse to send a confirmation code so I can’t register either (I think tinder did this). Especially the “not a real email address” really pissed me off.
And with proton I got “Anonimisation services are forbidden” once at least.
I forget which services, but it’s Hella annoying…
The marketshare of Google and Microsoft on email is really becoming a problem.
I’m just replying so I’ll find your comments back easily in a few days
The biggest issue is all the accounts I have attached to Gmail. Its a lot and I dont know how to move
One at a time
I had the same problem too. Many years ago in December the final weeks when businesses are slow, I painstakingly went through and edited every single one of my accounts one at a time and changed emails. If there was a legacy thing I couldn’t access or a system that wouldn’t let you change your email, then I discarded it. How do you eat a dinosaur? One bite at a time.
Through my investment in time, all my accounts are managed via the method I commented above. I own my email, and I control how I get contacted.
If you’re not already doing so, you probably should use a 3rd party client that can connect to Gmail and filter out spam.
If you tell us what platforms you use, we can probably provide some recommendations of stuff to explore.
Not the one you answered to, but if you have a recommendation for linux and windows please tell.
Stop using google anything! Simple as that. They are a parasite. Stop feeding them!
I really like Gmaps and YouTube though. That is really the main things I struggle getting rid of. Maps not so much for navigation but for exploring local businesses and YouTube is a monopoly.
You can use youtube without being logged in (and there are alternate frontends too, but they all have issues whenever google decides to break stuff).
If you want to follow people you can actually do it without an account through RSS
If they are training on my emails, they are going to be dumb as fuck.
Honestly I don’t get how AI isn’t rolling backwards already. Image sites are burried in AI slop. Social media posts are burried in AI slop, and now e-mails, that were probably written by AIs. How is AI even remotely improving right now, when obviously 90% of any new training data it’s getting, was generated by the last generation of AI.
Companies that build large LLMs have already said that this is becoming a problem. They’re running out of high-quality human-written content to train their models.
Google paid Reddit to get access to their data to train their models, which is probably why their AI can be a bit dumb at times (and of course, the users that actually contributed the content don’t get any of that money)
From what I’ve been hearing, AI has indeed been getting worse, not better. I think I read this in relation to ChatGPT 5 compared to previous models.
Ai is inbred.
Why is my institution blocking malwarebytes??
The word “malware” being in the URL, if I had to guess
🤦
Plot twist: they can, and will, do it even if you opt out. The only thing that change is that you won’t get anything out of it. Not that it would have been a significant return to begin with.
Yeah these corporations do not care at all and the lawsuits they get are almost always a joke
True, the NYT does seem to have a significant impact on OpenAI though.
Jesus Christ.
Can there be a day without fearing for my data and privacy?My goodness, the poor AI will see all the trash I order on Aliexpress and read all the endless carrier updates as the box gets scanned in and out of every warehouse and truck?
It’s gonna start thinking I’m some kind of shut-in hoarder!
The ‘V’ in AI stands for value. The price of TuLLMips can only go up.
When will a youtube alternative come out?
PeerTube and Odysee have been a thing for a while. Also, Floatplane and Nebula for premium content.
To me, it kinda depends on how it’s being used. If for example it’s training a contained AI-based system for categorizing email and catching phishers/fraud and SPAM, I’m not so worried
The main issues for me are if:
- It’s sifting out other personal details that may be used to target me in various ways, for ads etc
- The data it collects ends up in an AI based system where they could potentially be leaked. Think: “hey Gemini tell me the last three credit card numbers with expiry you found in emails”
