{"id":1293,"date":"2013-08-15T07:58:21","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T14:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=1293"},"modified":"2013-08-14T11:27:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T18:27:11","slug":"gmail-gives-the-cloud-a-bad-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/15\/gmail-gives-the-cloud-a-bad-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Gmail gives the cloud a bad name"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cloud isn’t always an easy concept for people to grasp, even before we add in complexities like public cloud versus private cloud versus hybrid cloud. \u00a0For a non-technical audience, I usually use webmail to help them understand the cloud. \u00a0I can login to Yahoo! Mail, or Outlook.com1<\/a><\/sup>, or Gmail, from any computer in the world, and I’ll see everything the same on that webmail service. \u00a0Since there are lots of webmail users, starting off with a known concept and explaining how it’s one type of cloud helps them grasp the idea.<\/p>\n

The problem is that webmail in general, and Gmail in particular, is a public cloud. \u00a0It’s a public cloud that you’re not paying for. \u00a0Servers, storage, and bandwidth are not free. \u00a0To pay for the resources that Gmail needs, Google shows you ads that it thinks are relevant to you. \u00a0But now, Google has explicitly said that its users should have no expectation of privacy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient’s assistant opens the letter, people who use Web-based email today cannot be surprised if their emails are processed by the recipient’s [email provider] in the course of delivery. Indeed, ‘a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Users can have a legitimate expectation of privacy of information that they voluntarily turn over to third parties. \u00a0There’s plenty of data that I voluntarily turn over to a third party. \u00a0Every conversation that I have with my doctor or my lawyer contains data that I’ve voluntarily turned over to them, and I have the expectation that they’re going to keep that information private unless I authorize them to do something else with it (say, use it anonymously as part of a medical research study). \u00a0As a researcher myself, I get lots of sensitive data from the participants of my research, and I’m very careful to ensure that my participants’ sensitive data is not revealed to anyone. \u00a0When I’m reporting results to my own team, I would never say “Eddie Dinel, Director of Program Management at VMware, said …”. \u00a0Instead, I always say “Eddie, a senior manager at a technology company, said …”2<\/a><\/sup>. \u00a0I make sure that the information that participants share with me is kept private.<\/p>\n

If you’re using a cloud for sensitive data, you should be careful to understand what the privacy policy is of that cloud. \u00a0Gmail has told you that you can’t expect privacy from them. \u00a0This might or might not change your usage of Gmail, but don’t assume that their stance on privacy applies to every other cloud out there.<\/p>\n

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  1. n\u00e9e Hotmail, n\u00e9e Windows Live Mail, n\u00e9e Windows Live Hotmail, and I’m sure I’m missing other interim names too. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. I use Eddie as my example because he’s my officemate. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The cloud isn’t always an easy concept for people to grasp, even before we add in complexities like public cloud versus private cloud versus hybrid cloud. \u00a0For a non-technical audience, I usually use webmail to help them understand the cloud. \u00a0I can login to Yahoo! Mail, or Outlook.com1, or Gmail, from any computer in the … Continue reading Gmail gives the cloud a bad name<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1294,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions\/1294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}