Google on Monday has updated its terms of service that explicitly illustrates company’s email scanning practices.
The updated terms of service includes a new paragraph that explains how Google’s software scans and analyses user email content and messages automatically when they are delivered, received, and stored in the servers.
“Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection,” read the the updated terms of service.
“This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.”
This new paragraph replaces the company’s TOS update in November 2013, that read “If you have a Google Account, we may display your Profile name, Profile photo, and actions you take on Google or on third-party applications connected to your Google Account (such as +1’s, reviews you write and comments you post) in our Services, including displaying in ads and other commercial contexts.”
“We want our policies to be simple and easy for users to understand. These changes will give people even greater clarity and are based on feedback we’ve received over the last few months,” a Google spokesperson told ZDNet in a statement.
Google was previously accused of breaching privacy and wiretapping laws by scanning users’ messages to compile secret profiles and target advertising.
However last month, Google got a major legal victory when US District Court Judge Lucy Koh decided not to combine several class action lawsuits under a single lawsuit. Koh rejected the request saying that the issue of consent among parties was too different.
Google has argued that Gmail users have signed the terms of service and have implicitly consented to have their emails read.
