Do you think your Gmail is private? You'll probably have to rethink it, as Google is reportedly scanning the Gmail shopping messages it stores in your account.
Last week, a user posted on Reddit what did he discover when opened the Google Shopping Accounts page. His page contained all the purchases made by Amazon and other online stores, even though they did not use Google Pay.
Within the Purchases page, there were all the purchases made by online services such as Dominos, Steam, Amazon, Adidas and many more. It's worth mentioning once again that the Reddit user was not using Google Pay.
How can this happen; Very simple. Google analyzes Gmail messages to track purchases that it then exports and stores.
BleepingComputer contacted Google about the theme, and company officials confirmed that the information came from Gmail messages.
They stated that this is to help their users easily find their data and that they do not use any of this information to show ads.
“To make it easy for you to view and track your purchases, reservations and subscriptions in one place, we've created a private destination that only you can see. You can delete this information at any time. We don't use any information from your Gmail messages to serve you ads, and that includes receipts and email confirmations that appear on the Purchases page.”
While they may not use this information to run ads, are they using them for something else? Google did not answer this question.
The company said we can delete this data at any time, but it did not say how difficult it is.
Instead of having a single setting that allows you to control how this data is stored, you must delete each purchase separately. (See the pictures above).
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