Gmail: Simply The Best Comparations make it clear

[evought 0]

I use gmail myself and agree with the reviewer. Depending on what you use the system for, however, there are some things you might want to be aware of. Specifically, Google (mechanically) scans your mail messages.GMail's advertising system provides ads which are tailored to you. This allows them to not waste your time reading irrelevent ads and increases the response rate for their advertisers. They do this by filtering your mail and displaying ads which correspond to things you discuss in your messages. If you spend several messages talking about your upcoming trip to the Outer Banks, you may get more ads all of a sudden for, say, cheap air fares or suntan lotion.This concerns some people for several reasons:1) It is trivial for google to add automatic filters for purposes other than advertising (political reasons, law enforcement, etc.)2) The compiled personal information can be sold.3) It is not clear who in the company might have access to your email data (outside the typical system administration staff)The bottom line is that if you use your gmail account for any sort of confidential or business correspondence, be aware of the filtering capabilities. Your email is exposed with any provider (or in transit between providers) and any provider can set up to gather statistics on message contents or selectively read messages, but in gmail's case, we already know they do it. That being said, this message is not meant to alarm and I thing gmail's advertising setup is both ethical and innovative--- as long as you know it is there.If you feel the need to protect certain emails from filtering and possible disclosure, look at PGP or GPG (GNU Privacy Guard) style email encryption (https://www.gnupg.org/). In combination with gmail's POP feature, you can readily produce and read encrypted messages on your own system and use the online access only for your run of the mill correspondence. Personal encryption is not a bad idea in any case, email has always been the equivalent of writing your message on a postcard; anyone who handles it can read it at any stage of processing. Many of these privacy protection tools are free (as in beer).

[pomjim 0]

gazkin,

I assume the programme you refer to is GMail drive?

 

When GMail change anything to do with their login or whatever, then GMail frive gets "logged out".

 

The guy who wrote the programme is on the ball about it, and usually upgrades the programme fairly quickly.

 

All you need to do is to go the the website and download the updated version.

 

URL: GMAIL DRIVE

[plot 0]

google will be forever in the beta stage because well they will keep improving them self till they have the monopoly, as they say they are always wanting everyone to do what ever they wish with google so 1)gmail offers you to use your own email address with the good account, so you can use your school account with gmail space2)also with gmail you have google talk which is integrated with gmail (just like msn with hotmail) and google talk will soon create msn, icq, aim and yahoo integration because they want the google users to do what what they want with google and all of its tools3)gmail offers GmailDrive, this is a program in which you install and it adds a removable drive to your computer alowing you to set you your own game server or web server on your gmail account!4)The draft system is definetly a cool feature with an autosave feature just added its by far the coolest out there, like have you ever been working on an email for like 10 mins then your browser decideds to preform an illegal error and shut down on you?? well with autosave it will still be there for you :mellow:gmail is by far the best email out there, maybe not in space because 30gigs is out there and they say they plan to expand to 50 then 100gigs, but i will remain faithful to google untill this 30gigs alows you to make a removable drive outta the email account then i can make some use out of itgoogle coming out with a paypal system is also another sted up, since paypal has had alot of stupid competitors like yowcow and worldcash google will be the first smart one to take on the challenge of paypal and offer things like no commision faster proccessing and non of the gay limited access bs that paypal does (maybe something like it but not as a hassle to lift the access)just face it all your google haters, google is ahead in the race, and they're canadian!

[Gareth24 0]

I use gmail myself and agree with the reviewer. Depending on what you use the system for, however, there are some things you might want to be aware of. Specifically, Google (mechanically) scans your mail messages.

 

GMail's advertising system provides ads which are tailored to you. This allows them to not waste your time reading irrelevent ads and increases the response rate for their advertisers. They do this by filtering your mail and displaying ads which correspond to things you discuss in your messages. If you spend several messages talking about your upcoming trip to the Outer Banks, you may get more ads all of a sudden for, say, cheap air fares or suntan lotion.

 

This concerns some people for several reasons:

 

1) It is trivial for google to add automatic filters for purposes other than advertising (political reasons, law enforcement, etc.)

 

2) The compiled personal information can be sold.

 

3) It is not clear who in the company might have access to your email data (outside the typical system administration staff)

 

The bottom line is that if you use your gmail account for any sort of confidential or business correspondence, be aware of the filtering capabilities. Your email is exposed with any provider (or in transit between providers) and any provider can set up to gather statistics on message contents or selectively read messages, but in gmail's case, we already know they do it. That being said, this message is not meant to alarm and I thing gmail's advertising setup is both ethical and innovative--- as long as you know it is there.

 

If you feel the need to protect certain emails from filtering and possible disclosure, look at PGP or GPG (GNU Privacy Guard) style email encryption (https://www.gnupg.org/). In combination with gmail's POP feature, you can readily produce and read encrypted messages on your own system and use the online access only for your run of the mill correspondence. Personal encryption is not a bad idea in any case, email has always been the equivalent of writing your message on a postcard; anyone who handles it can read it at any stage of processing. Many of these privacy protection tools are free (as in beer).

1064324693[/snapback]

Hi People,

 

This is my first post anyway,

 

I love my Gmail, it's extremely easy,slick and cool. The only slight tiny problem I have about it, is I Have heard alot of things about Google's privacy thing. And apparently the privacy agreement runs out in 2028 or around then, so I think that means they can read your mail not quite sure, but I think so.

 

If only there was a nice privacy paranoid company that would come and take over the email market, I don't really like hotmail at all.

 

So all in all, Gmail is the best and if anyone needs an invite just ask me

[plot 0]

This was copied off the gmail help center

https://support.google.com/mail/

"Is Google reading my email?"

 

"Google is NOT reading your mail. Privacy is an issue we take very seriously. Gmail is a technology-based program, so advertising and related information are shown using a completely automated process. Ads are selected for relevance and served by Google computers using the same contextual advertising technology that powers our AdSense program. This technology lets Google target dynamically changing content such as email or daily news stories.

Because the ads and related pages are matched to information that is already of interest to you, we hope you'll find them relevant and useful.

 

If you'd like to know more about how Google handles your Gmail information, please read our Gmail Privacy Policy."

 

and this is number 1 in the privacy statement

"1. Is Google reading my email?

 

 

No. Google scans the text of Gmail messages in order to filter spam and detect viruses, just as all major webmail services do. Google also uses this scanning technology to deliver targeted text ads and other related information. This is completely automated and involves no humans."

 

and a privacy statement from New York Times

 

If Gmail creeps you out, just don't sign up. ... That would be a shame, though, because you'd be missing a wonderful thing. Even in its current, early state, available only to a few thousand testers, Gmail appears destined to become one of the most useful Internet services since Google itself.

 

... The ads are so subtle, so easily ignored, that it's hard to imagine anyone preferring the big, blinking, slow-loading graphic ads that appear every time you check for messages at the Hotmail and Yahoo Mail sites. Even more refreshing, Gmail doesn't turn you into an unpaid billboard for Yahoo or Microsoft (Hotmail's owner) by stamping ads on at the bottom of every outgoing message, no matter how sensitive the topic. ...

 

The only population likely not to be delighted by Gmail are those still uncomfortable with those computer-generated ads. Those people are free to ignore or even bad-mouth Gmail, but they shouldn't try to stop Google from offering Gmail to the rest of us. We know a good thing when we see it.

 

more privacy reviews can be found herePrivacy Policy."

 

and this is number 1 in the privacy statement

"1. Is Google reading my email?

 

 

No. Google scans the text of Gmail messages in order to filter spam and detect viruses, just as all major webmail services do. Google also uses this scanning technology to deliver targeted text ads and other related information. This is completely automated and involves no humans."

 

and a privacy statement from New York Times

 

If Gmail creeps you out, just don't sign up. ... That would be a shame, though, because you'd be missing a wonderful thing. Even in its current, early state, available only to a few thousand testers, Gmail appears destined to become one of the most useful Internet services since Google itself.

 

... The ads are so subtle, so easily ignored, that it's hard to imagine anyone preferring the big, blinking, slow-loading graphic ads that appear every time you check for messages at the Hotmail and Yahoo Mail sites. Even more refreshing, Gmail doesn't turn you into an unpaid billboard for Yahoo or Microsoft (Hotmail's owner) by stamping ads on at the bottom of every outgoing message, no matter how sensitive the topic. ...

 

The only population likely not to be delighted by Gmail are those still uncomfortable with those computer-generated ads. Those people are free to ignore or even bad-mouth Gmail, but they shouldn't try to stop Google from offering Gmail to the rest of us. We know a good thing when we see it.

 

more privacy reviews can be found here

 

Now as you can see gmail is really big on privacy and takes every step to keep it around, so ya just face it....gmail is all pro and not just show

[akijikan 0]

Gmail has two new features the First of which is very important!

"Auto-save
We spent 20 minutes writing this entry, and then the browser crashed. Good thing there's auto-save. It saves. Automatically.

Export contacts
Export your Gmail Contacts and save them in a file for back-up or to use in another account or serviceâgreat if you're using Gmail's free POP access."

Auto-save is a feature that is near and dear to my heart as I've countlessly lost e-mails and blog entries and documents to different reasons.

I want to add my appreciation for Gmail Drive. If only someone would write a program like that for http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. It would be 37.5% harddrive increase for me!

[pomjim 0]

akijikan,I have actually emailed the guy who wrote GMail Drive asking hi if it's possible he can do the same thing for 30gigs. com. As yet I have heard nothing form him, but I have my fingers firmly crossed!!

[evought 0]

Gmail has two new features the First of which is very important!
"Auto-save
We spent 20 minutes writing this entry, and then the browser crashed. Good thing there's auto-save. It saves. Automatically.

<... snipped ...>

Hmmm... I did not know it did that. That is definitely a worthwhile feature. I have gotten into the habit with web forms of editting the fields in another editor and pasting the finished text. I have been in too many situations where either the browser or, more often, the remote application bombed out.

How in the world does it manage this? The text is typed on the client; as far as I know it is not transmitted until the message is submitted. Is there a Javascript in the background which sends intermediate versions?

[akijikan 0]

Hmmm... I did not know it did that. That is definitely a worthwhile feature. I have gotten into the habit with web forms of editting the fields in another editor and pasting the finished text. I have been in too many situations where either the browser or, more often, the remote application bombed out.

 

How in the world does it manage this? The text is typed on the client; as far as I know it is not transmitted until the message is submitted. Is there a Javascript in the background which sends intermediate versions?

1064324897[/snapback]

Actually Gmail has always been javascript (by default, you can run an HTML by option). I always thought that when you leave a gmail window open and it auto updates (refreshes) it was doing that with javascript.

[saxsux 0]

I don't think they have, the max. filesize is still 10MB, or so it says in thier Help Centre.I've got one of those Gmail Drives in My Computer, and it works fine for me.Are you sure you're not having computer trouble or anything?

[syhs89 0]

But it couldn't upload zip or rar file which contains executable file...You will have to rename the file to something else like *.exe2 or the whole zip or rar file to *.zip2 , *.rar2 etc...Any software to do this job??

[saxsux 0]

Yeah, I found that too. It's quite annoying when you have a legitimate reason to send those sorts of files to people, and Gmail wont let you.

[syhs89 0]

they also scans those compressed files.i think that putting a password can stop them from doing sobut i am wrong...i got busted..lolso i tried rename them to other name like *.rar2..lol

[sujith 0]

I am also of the view that Gmail is the best out,

There, at first I was a Yahoo! User when Gmail was introduced I joined it I am now happy with my Gmail account. The main reasons for which I like Gmail Are

i) It loads very fast

ii) Allows threads

iii) Allows archiving of mails

iv) You can use Google search for finding mail

v) Allows configuring with e-mail clients

vi) The enormous mailbox

vii) Filters

Now some factors I found irritating are

i) interface is not good-looking(MSN is the best)

 

The favorite feature of Gmail that attracts me is

It loads very fast

Allows configuring with e-mail client[/font][/size]

 

Thank you

knight17

[ryan.atkisson 0]

I LOVE Gmail. When i heard that google was introducing a new mail service with 1GB of storage space i almost fell out of my chair. I'm the kind of person who never lets an email sit in my inbox for more than a week and the idea of "never throwing any email away" sounded absurd to me. Now that i've gotten to use gmail i find that storing a backup copy of all my emails on the gmail server is VERY convienient and makes my life a lot easier. My favorite gmail features has to be the free POP mail access, though. -Ryan