A lady that worked on the technology that scans the content of the emails to present to you advertisements based on keywords, has spoken about the controversy behind Gmail and the technology it uses, and why we shouldn’t worry. Phy posted it in the comments for the post I made earlier, Gmail Is Too Creepy, so you can read it here:

“I personally don’t think this technology is an invasion of privacy – the emails are being scanned for content, yes, but the results of that scan are used to present *you* with relevant ads. The results of the scan are not stored anywhere, and even if you click on one of the advertising links, the advertisers aren’t given any data on *why* their ad was brought up as potentially relevant to you. The advertisers don’t even know *who* clicked over to their site – when you click on the link, Google tracks that there was a click-through (but not who clicked through) and then just opens the target page in a new window. So information about what kinds of messages you read isn’t being distributed anywhere, or used for any purpose other than to make your personal experience better. Yes, the result is that Google hopes to make more money on the ads because they are more relevant to you, but the data about what you’re reading doesn’t go anywhere.”

Max Thrane has also posted his thoughts on Gmail and the ridiculous things people will do to get an invitation.