For the average email user, reading and sending an email seems to be nothing more than a simplified secured process of clicking a few hyperlinks to read a message, or hitting up some words via a keyboard, along with a click to send one.
In their view, a sent message will go directly and securely to their intended recipient inbox, or if they were the receiver, then the message they are reading would have been sent directly and securely to their inbox.
Furthermore, it is a common theory that so long as a person keeps their login credentials secured and to themselves, their is a natural guarantee that their email communications are ultimately private.
And in any case, most people feels guarded and self assured about the confidentiality of the content that they have read in their inbox, and the same way about the messages that they may had sent to someone, as long as no one else knows their login particulars.
But if you are one of those millions of email users who are stuck on that false sense of security, then it may be time for you to think again.
Back in 2009 there were widespread accusations that Google was using a tool to scan and indirectly read the emails of its users, and then dump adverts to them based upon what Google would have read within a particular message.
This became more obvious as millions of Gmail users began to notice that several ads pertaining to the subject matter that they were reading was being displayed by Google within the advert frames of their inbox.
Interestingly, the same message-related advertising pattern has begun to show its face within several other major email service providers including Yahoo and Hotmail.
Opponents of this presumably intrusive form of advertising had long argued that Google and the other email service providers are technically scanning and reading the messages that are listed within a user’s inbox, and is displays adverts according to the content of the email that is being read.
For example, if someone sends or receives an email discussing an immigration problem, Google or the other major email providers, will immediately display ads about existing immigration lawyers, or adverts that may be relevant to the message being sent or read by the email account user.
This subject specific advertising could have had only occurred if Google (for example) was aware of the contents that was written within the email.
And though several of theses email service providers have admitted that their systems automatically scans (reads) their clients emails for targeted advertising purposes, they are nonetheless arguing that their companies do not retain or specifically go through the messages in a manner that would have revealed the content being exchanged by email users on their servers.
But for millions of email users around the world, such an explanation does not sit well with their conscience.
Nonetheless, as long as those subject related adverts keeps popping up your inbox, rest assure that every single one of your email messages is being read by something or someone else, apart from you or your intended recipient.
So the next time you sends an email message, or is reading a supposedly private one from a pal or business associated, take a look at the displayed messages in your inbox, and you will realize that after all, your message is not so private again.
