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Apple and Google, Like Microsoft, Reserve Right to Read Customer Emails
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Could you cite to a statute in your jurisdiction that states that a tenant has the right to revoke permission given to a landlord to enter the tenant's premises?
Suppose that the landlord owns a two-story house and decides to rent the second floor to a tenant, which happens to have a deck with a nice view. The tenant offers to include a provision in the lease allowing the landlord to enter the tenant's apartment at any time to access the deck. Is this clause void in your country?
Are you familiar with the terms and conditions that App Store users periodically have to agree to in order to access the App Store on an iPhone or iPad? They're usually about 60 pages long. Do you think that the only terms in that agreement that are enforceable are the ones that the user read and knew we're included? Many people simply tap "Agree" and don't read any of it. Do you think that none of the terms are binding on those people?
I've always assumed that the companies running the different email services I've used over the years were able to read my emails, unless I encrypted them. And frankly, the vast majority of my (personal) emails are not worth encrypting.
And you probably should check your contract with your landlord.
I agree.....
on the privacy concerns the history of the Microsoftie shows us. But also I am aware that the tech companies can go to great lenghts to protect their IP and block product leaks, in the limits of the laws and user agreements. I think we all must READ carefully the EULAs in any service we sign.
Information always had been and will be power. So, we have the right to choose what share. But also the companies that provide "free services" can do all they think legitimate or legally aware with the info we put in the infraestructure they mantain with their hardware, software, people and money....
Will be a outrage if we find Facebook do data mining on our personal data and sell it to the highest bidder? Sure, it will be. But still, more a billion of people will use it anyway....
on the privacy concerns the history of the Microsoftie shows us. But also I am aware that the tech companies can go to great lenghts to protect their IP and block product leaks, in the limits of the laws and user agreements. I think we all must READ carefully the EULAs in any service we sign.
Information always had been and will be power. So, we have the right to choose what share. But also the companies that provide "free services" can do all they think legitimate or legally aware with the info we put in the infraestructure they mantain with their hardware, software, people and money....
Will be a outrage if we find Facebook do data mining on our personal data and sell it to the highest bidder? Sure, it will be. But still, more a billion of people will use it anyway....
What can you do though?
Running own mail server : only helps if you don't send messages to people with Gmail, iCloud, Hotmail, corporate or other public mail services.
Encrypting messages : only helps if all of your friends are nerds and do not use web based mail clients. Does not help with mails to corporate.
Unless there is a standard for end-to-end encryption email you are better off using iMessage, encrypted jabber or whatnot for conversations you would like to keep private.
Running own mail server : only helps if you don't send messages to people with Gmail, iCloud, Hotmail, corporate or other public mail services.
Encrypting messages : only helps if all of your friends are nerds and do not use web based mail clients. Does not help with mails to corporate.
Unless there is a standard for end-to-end encryption email you are better off using iMessage, encrypted jabber or whatnot for conversations you would like to keep private.
I don't think there is an explicit statute because it's together with the general "right of use" of the tenant. Some relevant articles from the Federal Act on the Amendment of the Swiss Civil Code (Part Five: The Code of Obligations)
No, but it's a completely different scenario in which access to the tenant's apartment is required to reach a place the landlord still has right of use (he has not right of use anymore of the tenant's apartment). Maybe in this case easement law applies? Not sure.
I never said that the terms are valid only if you read them, I said that they have to be clearly stated on the contract. If you tap "Agree" and not read the terms it doesn't mean they are not clearly stated, so they are not automatically void.
It doesn't mean they are automatically enforceable either, your mileage may vary a lot depending on the country. E.g. in Italy exists the concept of "restrictive clause", which are clauses generating a "significant imbalance of rights against the consumer". These clauses to be valid (assuming they are legal in the first place) need to be individually signed (so, a signature for the contract itself, and a signature for every single "restrictive" clause). If a judge deems that the clause is "restrictive" in the above mentioned sense and it was not individually signed (only the contract was) it will be declared void.
This is why people need more awareness of S/MIME encryption on their e-mail, and I really wish Mail would make this easier to setup; having to delve into Keychain access just isn't very friendly when Mail could easily have a simple setup wizard for installing certificates (or even creating them, since self-signed encryption should be fine for casual use). Mail also lacks a simple method for passing around your public key for your friends, family etc. to install.
But with these steps simplified encryption would be dead easy; Mail for example just does it automatically any time you send a message to someone whose public key you have. Even when you don't have a public key for someone, you can at least still add a signature to show the message is legitimate.
E-mail clients just don't make these features simple enough to setup though; while it's obviously better to get a certificate validated by a third party, self-signing still adds a ton of protection for casual use, which is what we need in order to make e-mail actually secure. In fact, in some ways I prefer self-signing, given that certificate authorities can potentially be forced to give out keys or be hacked themselves, only issue facing self-signed really is that some e-mail servers may reject self-signed signatures (which is actually a stupid behaviour since your e-mail client is ultimately responsible for trusting it or not).
But with these steps simplified encryption would be dead easy; Mail for example just does it automatically any time you send a message to someone whose public key you have. Even when you don't have a public key for someone, you can at least still add a signature to show the message is legitimate.
E-mail clients just don't make these features simple enough to setup though; while it's obviously better to get a certificate validated by a third party, self-signing still adds a ton of protection for casual use, which is what we need in order to make e-mail actually secure. In fact, in some ways I prefer self-signing, given that certificate authorities can potentially be forced to give out keys or be hacked themselves, only issue facing self-signed really is that some e-mail servers may reject self-signed signatures (which is actually a stupid behaviour since your e-mail client is ultimately responsible for trusting it or not).
People like you piss me off beyond everything.
Calling people who are concerned about their privacy "paranoid" in a very patronising and condescending way.
As if we didn't learn enough in the past months about how companies and governments treat our human right to privacy.
It's very feasible that Apple has the ability to access and read emails stored in Apple Mail whenever they want to, and while it may seem utterly impossible to you that they might be doing it some day, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Have you read the EULA to OS X, are you a legal expert and can you tell us that there aren't any passages in there that could authorize them to do just that? And can you assure us that Apple won't do it anyway "by mistake"? As if we haven't been there.
Educate yourself and read a bloody history book. Maybe then you won't act surprised if suddenly all turns into an issue that concerns you as well. Been to Turkey lately?
I guess I had some righteous indignation when I read that MS read a person's email to nail him for stealing company secrets, and low and behold. Apple and Google have the same provision
I have nothing to hide, I mostly live a boring life, but its the principle of the thing that bothers me the most.
I have nothing to hide, I mostly live a boring life, but its the principle of the thing that bothers me the most.
Yeah, that's assuming your recipients are also running their own mail servers
My friends and family use the mail server, too. I think I might be able to read their mail, but I've never tried (I neither have the time nor interest).
not end to end
your email can still be viewed/duplicated from all the mail relays that it has passed before it reached the destination. there is no escape
your email can still be viewed/duplicated from all the mail relays that it has passed before it reached the destination. there is no escape
Except for the fact that mail is constantly stolen / lost / dropped into a dumpster by USPS employees who don't give a sheet about what they are supposed to deliver.
See, that's just ridiculous, this isn't about other people's viewpoints about privacy, it is apparently about yours. If you are concerned about privacy, don't use email. This has been true since the inception of email, you can't expect privacy in a forum that is inherently NOT private. It's the equivalent of writing your messages in 3' flaming letters on your roof. Email has NEVER been a place where you could or should expect privacy. If you want to dance naked on the street, people are going to see it. Dance naked in private, then you can expect some form of privacy.
And this goes double, triple, octuple for emails on your company's system. The story in question is about a Microsoft employee. There is absolutely zero privacy for an employee using the company's email system. If you didn't know that, you learned something important this week.
What do they teach kids about email and the internet these days??
I have nothing to hide, and no legal reasons for them to read mine anyway. But of course people are going to get paranoid and freak out
"May I take a look at your smartphone briefly then?"
- "Why, what for?"
"Oh no reason, I just want to have a look at your contacts and probably read some of your last messages quickly."
- "That's none of your business!"
"Exactly."
True story. And works most of the time someone thinks he/she "has nothing to hide"...
The question was about the Mail client application, not about public email services. As example, in a company emails sent by an internal email address to another internal address are definately expected to never leave the company's network and are expected to stay private to the company (assuming the company correctly configured its own email servers). If I use Mail to read or write these emails, Apple should not be able to access them in any way. I would be very surprised if this were not the case.
Of course as soon as an email leaves the company's network it could be intercepted, but this has nothing to do with the mail client of choice.
your email can still be viewed/duplicated from all the mail relays that it has passed before it reached the destination. there is no escape
Wrong. PGP is your friend.
Plus, it's really simple to set up: https://gpgtools.org
It's not for using against you now, spying is for hitting down the nail that stands out. But maybe you have no plans to ever stand out.
It is so sad when I keep reading more and more bull along the lines of, "I've done nothing wrong, I have nothing to hid so who cares if all these companies that give me products for "free" have access to my personal stuff?"
I am not saying live your life in paranoia but goddamnit, this passive-aggressive attitude that more and more people are adopting is what will eventually lead to "selling our souls to the devil" in exchange for "free" access to products such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail etc.......Stop being so willing to give your personal life away for a few crappy products! It doesn't matter if you think your info is boring or not, it is your personal information and should be worth more to you.
I am not saying live your life in paranoia but goddamnit, this passive-aggressive attitude that more and more people are adopting is what will eventually lead to "selling our souls to the devil" in exchange for "free" access to products such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail etc.......Stop being so willing to give your personal life away for a few crappy products! It doesn't matter if you think your info is boring or not, it is your personal information and should be worth more to you.
What a minute.... I haven't read all the posts here, but wasn't the issue that Microsoft read the mail of somebody that was suing them? Namely, that the company read the e-mail and not law enforcement agencies. The clause cited in Apple's terms of service are about revealing information to law enforcement.
Or have I misunderstood?
Or have I misunderstood?
They _all_ "read" email by having a program scan it for keywords and titles and sources.
That's how they detect spam.
And, in Apple's case at least, what they consider to be pornography.
Remember last year when it turned out that Apple was deleting emails in its iCloud service that contained the phrase 'barely legal teen'?
It's all automatic.
You should read the bloody source article, if it isn't too much trouble. If you did, perhaps you wouldn't have to be so pissed off and maybe wouldn't feel the need to cast unfounded aspersions. Hint: it's entirely about the email services provided by these companies and not at all about them reaching into your computer to read everything on it.
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Exactly. I answered the question factually, as strange as that may seem to some.
People who say no problem with respect to others being able to monitor their thoughts and personal information, have missed a very important history lesson. This is EXACTLY the road that leads to totalitarian regimes. Step by step, little by little, erosion of privacy, until the day arrives when anyone can find themselves "enemy of the state", ... simply for what they think.
And tech has made this much worse. In the past if you were brought in front of junta for "thought crimes", it was "he said vs she said" verbal testimony, or at best..a wiretap recording. Now they have it in writing...directly from you.
The more eyes monitoring you, the more chance of someone "reporting" something on you.
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