[LINK] The Perpetual, Invisible Window Into Your Gmail Inbox

[Roger Clarke]

At 12:55 +1100 11/2/12, Kim Holburn wrote:
>You can give strange companies access to your gmail.  How could that go wrong?
...
>>http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/perpetual-window-into-gmail/
>>  Wired Opinion: The Perpetual, Invisible Window Into Your Gmail Inbox
...
>>  But since Gmail added oAuth support in March 2010, an increasing 
>>number of startups are asking for a perpetual, silent window into 
>>your inbox.
>>  I'm concerned oAuth, while hugely convenient for both developers 
>>and users, may be paving the way for an inevitable privacy meltdown.

Whether you're concerned depends on your point of view.

40 years' privacy advocacy (yep, 1972 was when I tripped into it) has 
taught me that it doesn't matter how good your analysis, and how 
convincing your argument (to you at least), 'privacy doesn't matter 
until it does'.

So the strategic bit of me wants, and is dependent on, "an inevitable 
privacy meltdown".

The tactical bit, and the SNAG part of me (if any), hopes that the 
damage to the suckers won't be too great before the meltdown occurs.


-- 
Longstanding alternative .sig for people who write to me using gmail:

If you want to talk, please send me a message from a proper account.
Here's why I don't communicate with people at Gmail addresses:
http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/Gurgle0604.html#Gmail

See also the letter a bunch of us signed almost 8 years ago, when 
Gmail was launched:  http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.htm