Anyone else tried it yet? The large inbox means nothing to me (I never even used more than 3% of my 6meg yahoo inbox), but I do like the filters and such. On the other hand, their xml or whatever is a pain. It doesn't work in all browsers, and it doesn't allow middle clicking of links to open them in new tabs.

If anyone wants to try it out, I have 6 invites available on each of 5 or 6 accts (plus the invites get refreshed every so often). If you want an invite, I need an email address to send it to. Spam catching addresses work fine, just remember to check them. (Hotmail and yahoo have a habit of sending the invites to the bulk/junkmail folders, so make sure to check there as well.)

My Hotmail account been recently upgraded from a 2 megs to 250 megs (free) and I hardly ever got to the maximum of 2 megs... Would be quite pointless for me.

Does Gmail still read all incoming and outgoing mail?

EoF- Yahoo upgraded to 100 megs after gmail came out, but I still tried gmail out of curiosity. You might find it useful for sharing files, since it has a 10meg attachment size.
In addition, after getting my gmail acct/s, I discovered that there are 2 or 3 other free email services which provide 1gig space and 10meg attachments.

MC- As far as I know, yes. Incoming mail is displayed with google text ads, although outgoing mail has no ads. (Even if you forward an email that had the google ads when you viewed it in gmail, it won't have any ads when it reaches the non-gmail acct.) It's clear that it still scans incoming mail, but not clear whether it does anything with outgoing email.

Thanks, so I'll keep my policy not to reply to e-mails coming from Gmail up.

I created an account just to see what was going on, and as much as it got hyped up, it really wasn't that impressive. Sure, there weren't a lot of ads, but with a little bit of work you can get email addresses that have no ads using clients and such. Plus, any of the extra features it has are negated by the weird save everything unfeature.

...Or you could have fun with it. Reply with stuff like "gmail sucks" "fuck google" etc, and see what kind of ads google turns up as a result.


One thing I'm suspicous of is the fact that google claims that public signups aren't available yet because they want to maintain limited numbers during the testing period. However, each new acct gets 6 invites to send out as soon as they "read" the welcome message. In addition, those invites get replenished periodically. This results in unlimited numbers of signups (which is exactly the opposite of what google claims). This, combined with the fact that the invites have to be sent to existing email addresses, makes me suspect that they are building a database of non-gmail email addresses that they will later either use for their own purposes, or sell to 3rd parties (or both).
This also means that using a spam catcher address to receive gmail invites is a very good idea.
What really cracks me up about gmail is the fact that people were actually trying to sell invites on ebay.

These sites also have free 1gig accts.
http://www.spymac.com/
http://www.walla.com/
http://us.rediff.com/index.html
http://www.msfund.com/index.php
http://cn.yahoo.com/

Lycos europe, yahoo, and some others have 1gig or more (yahoo and hotmail offer 2gig accts) accts available if you're willing to pay for them.

This site has some interesting info about mis-using gmail for file sharing and such.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/10/16/91629/331

Edited by Cypherswipe at 18:35 on November, 07th 2004

Well, every provider with spam protection also read all incoming mails. Echelon does also.
I think not to reply to gmail is useless. Google reads also every search word and gives automatic ads, gmail isn't very different.

Most forums I go to have one or two gmail threads, but they keep it contained in those threads and don't let it spill all over the board. Also, while the gmail invite threads were insanely popular at first, it didn't take long for everyone on the board to get one (or more) invites/accts. There are few such threads that are still active, because now everyone has a shitload of invites, and there's no one left who wants any.

I didn't know that they store e-mails.
But you read perhaps this (in german) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/52954
So gmail isn't the only one who store e-mails.

The only thing that gives some privacy is encryption or carrier pigions

That isn't in action yet, and while I totally oppose this whole idea, it's a little different, as they're not trying to exploit the private data commercially. Not that this makes it any better, of course.

Actually, pigeons are extremely unsafe as they can easily be intercepted Seriously: You already have received quite a few mails from me, so you should know I'm fully equipped for sending out encrypted e-mail. However, I can only use this feature if the receipient has means to decrypt what I've written - and that's unfortunately only the case with less than 5% of my regular e-mail contacts. Why encryption methods are so unpopular is beyond me.

Not in action yet but I don't think they will change something.
I think it's even worse.
What is better: a advertising letter for computer games or a letter from public prosecutor's office because you have offend against copyright laws because of abadonware stuff
Of course none letter is the best thing

You answered your own question before you even asked it. It's useless to have an encryptor or decryptor unless the other person also has one. Not only that, but they have to have the same one. If you're encrypting one way, and he's decrypting another, you're both fucked. With this in mind, it becomes a pyramid scheme. All your contacts have to have the same en/decryptor you do, and all their contacts have to have the same one they do, etc, etc. On the flipside of that, if an en/decryptor is too popular, it becomes a waste of time to encrypt it. Anyone intercepting it can simply use the same popular en/decryptor you and your friend are using.
Even if those problems didn't exist, en/decrypting is more effort than it's worth 99% of the time. If you're not emailing someone your bank acct info or your most bizarre sexual fantasies, who cares if some stranger reads it? Satisfying paranoia simply isn't enough reason for the vast majority of people to go to the extra steps to en/decrypt their emails.

Because "normal" people doesn't even care about someone else reading their mail, even if they do know about it.

It's just like those stupids contest. You must send something back somewhere with your home adress in case you win, or else you will never get anything... But what do you think they do with the adresses? They post you ads back! (and probably sell the adresses away to another company)

Often when I say this to a lot of people in my neighborhood, they look at me with a vivid face. "They what? You're crazy, they would never do that! It's a respectable business."

Most e-mail clients these days have one either natively or via plugin.

Err.... PGP / GPG have pretty much been the standard in the last few years. I don't know anyone who uses another system for e-mails.

Do you actually have the slightest idea how asymmetric encryption works? You encrypt with the receipient's public key, and that means only he can decrypt it - nobody else! Intercepting such a message is still trivial, but to read it, you need the private key of the receipient.

If you choose an e-mail client which has an 'encrypt if key is available' function, it takes exactly the same time as sending an unencrypted mail, because everything's done automatically. Decrypting is done on the fly with most clients anyway.

Because it's nobody's business what I tell someone else privately? If you don't have a problem with it, please BCC all your e-mails to me from now on.

I wonder if gmail scans the text of the attachments? A simple way to bypass their scanning might be to put something inane and pointless as the content of the actual email, then put your actual message as an attachment.

I think they're able to scan the text of attachements and that they do it, since every virus-scanner is able to scan email-attachements, even the content of (uncrypted) archives.

So, if they read all the mails, it would be a logical step to read also the text of attachements. And if they did not have done (?) this until now, they will do it after reading this thread...

Who are they?

In my opinion it is embarrassing that so many people even consider to use it. It shows how much the importance of privacy has already decreased.

Well, they are the weird, nymphomanic sex-aliens from outer space which control EVERTHING in our MODern societY... haR hAr HAr


As long as people have the option to offer their privacy (Big Brother-container (TV-Series), Bachelor (TV-Series), Camp in Australia (TV-Series), Gmail, etc.) I see no problem in that.

My biggest concern is the amount of phones and cellphones which are wiretapped (?) / listened to secretely by police (not only in usa, since patriotic act, but even more in most of europe).

Edited by dregenRocks at 22:38 on November, 10th 2004