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Is Gmail Safe for Emails?

Hackers are likely not the only people who might be sneakily reading your emails. Your email provider may just be doing that too.

In Googles case, this might just be what’s happening to you. Google collect lots of data that the vast majority of people are not aware of. If you grant them permission to do this then they are able to gain access to many different things such as:

  • Location
  • User ID
  • Purchase history
  • Search history
  • Photos

Now the issue with this is that, if your emails aren’t secured, this data could potentially get into the wrong people’s hands. Hackers thrive on trying to get a hold of information like this and in Googles case, they are just storing it and making it easier to access.

Another issue is that Gmail is the most popular email provider with around 1.5 billion active users. This means that there are even more targets to choose from for the hackers.

Everything about the way you interact with Gmail can be monitored like the things you are sending and who you are talking to. This can make it very easy for hackers to tailor make a scam for you.

So, how does Google use your data?

Most of the information gathered by Google is Metadata (data about data). This is then what is shared to advertisers. However, if data is carried over from another Google services via cookies, it can be associated to which service you used like YouTube or Google maps. This, coupled with the Google ecosystem being so vast, means that most things you do online will get fed back to google.

Even though Google claims that none of the data gathered from scanning emails like delivery tracking numbers or the information of your last purchase is being used for advertising. However, people have come to find that the information that they gather is logged and stored regardless.

Whilst storing the data itself doesn’t pose much of a threat, the possibility that a hacker could breach the security and access all of it is quite frightening. Of course, Google does store this data securely but the risk is still there.

How does Gmail compare vs other mainstream email providers?

Other email providers aren’t really any more private than Gmail. Microsoft outlook is similar in the sense that it shares data across Microsoft’s ecosystem of apps to tailor your experience.

Now this isn’t to say that Gmail is not the biggest culprit however. Due to Gmail having such a huge user base, it’s no surprise that they are the ones who gather the most data. Whilst other email providers gather far more than they should, none come close to Gmail.

The issue with doing this is that, not only is your precious data stored, but when it’s being gathered it can be intercepted by the data being sent on a compromised machine or by using a spoofed digital certificate.

Whilst the rates of this are quite low, it still happens. The only real way to be secure via email is to add other layers of security such as end-to-end encryption.

So, is Gmail secure and safe then?

For the majority of users, although it’s not technically ‘safe’, you won’t come into too many issues. However, Gmail and its built-in security is not enough on its own.  Gmail, like other competitors, lacks end-to-end encryption on their emails. This means that, if emails are intercepted, the hackers can access all of the content inside that email. With end-to-end encryption, it eliminates that risk.

In short, Gmail is not as secure as it should be. It requires another level of security on top of what it already has natively for it to be considered truly safe.

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