Internet Privacy: E-Mail Services List of Secure Email Providers that take Privacy Serious

Privacy laws and the internet

When you need an e-mail account and you want to start using the very popular and widely used Gmail services please note that the following is what you will be asked to agree on before you can get it and I quote: "Google Privacy Terms By choosing “I agree” below, you agree to Google’s Terms of Service.

You also agree to our Privacy Policy, which describes how we process your information, including these key points: Data we process when you use Google When you use Google services to do things like write a message in Gmail or comment on a YouTube video, we store the information you create.

When you search for a restaurant on Google Maps or watch a video on YouTube, for example, we process information about that activity – including information like the video you watched, device IDs, IP addresses, cookie data, and location. We also process the kinds of information described above when you use apps or sites that use Google services like ads, Analytics, and the YouTube video player.

Depending on your account settings, some of this data may be associated with your Google Account and we treat this data as personal information. You can control how we collect and use this data at My Account (myaccount.google.com).

Why we process it? We process this data for the purposes described in our policy, including to: Help our services deliver more useful, customized content such as more relevant search results; Improve the quality of our services and develop new ones; Deliver personalized ads, both on Google services and on sites and apps that partner with Google;Improve security by protecting against fraud and abuse; and Conduct analytics and measurement to understand how our services are used.

Combining data We also combine data among our services and across your devices for these purposes. For example, we show you ads based on information from your use of Search and Gmail, and we use data from trillions of search queries to build spell-correction models that we use across all of our services".Bottom-line: whatever you write or do on Gmail is not really private and belongs to Gmail.

For a list of secure email providers that take your privacy serious and do not track you (* = recommended, last updated December 7, 2016)click on the link below.

Read more: List of Secure Email Providers that take Privacy Serious - FreedomHack

Internet - Privacy: Google's privacy policy challenged in Europe

Google's new privacy policy is under legal attack from regulators in its largest European markets, who want the company to overhaul practices they say let it create a data goldmine at the expense of unwitting users.

Led by the French, organizations in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Italy agreed Tuesday on the joint action, with the ultimate possibility of imposing fines or restrictions on operations across the entire 27-country European Union.

Last year the company merged 60 separate privacy policies from around the world into one universal procedure. The European organizations complain that the new policy doesn't allow users to figure out which information is kept, how it is combined by Google services, or how long the company retains it.
The fines' financial impact on Google would be limited — French privacy watchdog CNIL has the right to fine the company up to 300,000 euros ($385,000), approximately the amount it earns in three minutes, based on its projected revenue of $61 billion this year. Britain can fine up to 500,000 pounds, but rarely does.

But successful legal action would hurt Google's image and could block its ability to collect such data until it addresses the regulators' concerns.

Read more: Google's privacy policy challenged in Europe - Technology & Science - CBC News

Internet: Innovate or Legislate ? - by Reihan Salam & Patrick Ruffini

"A McKinsey Global Institute study published last spring found that, worldwide, 2 billion people were connected to the Internet and almost $8 trillion exchanged hands via e-commerce. The United States captures 30 percent of all the revenues generated by the global Internet economy, and 40 percent of the net income. Moreover, the Internet has been a powerful driver of economic growth and job creation. In a survey of small and medium-sized enterprises, McKinsey found that for every job destroyed by the Internet, 2.6 were created. In the advanced countries that were included in the survey, the United States among them, Internet consumption and expenditure accounted for 21 percent of economic growth over the past few years.

For now, the Internet represents the great exception to the rising tide of state-guided capitalism, in which government favors politically connected firms and industries. As Ian Bremmer observes in his ominous book The End of the Free Market, the governments of the world’s rising economies seek to dominate key economic sectors. The global markets for energy, aviation, shipping, power generation, arms production, telecommunications, metals, minerals, petrochemicals, and much else are increasingly being manipulated by state-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds."

Note EU-Digest: It is quite obvious that many Governments supported by their corporate "friends" will do everything in their power to legislate controls over the Internet. They are doing this for a variety of reasons, mainly based on their self interest and perpetual survival. No difference in this respect between Capitalist, Communist or Dictatorial Governments. All one has to do is to look at some of the most recent developments on this issue. These included;  the Google, Facebook censorship actions, the US Federal Government Internet Piracy proposal, and the EU ACTA  proposal. These are all infringements on human rights and specifically the freedom of expression and must not be tolerated.

For more: Innovate or Legislate - Reihan Salam & Patrick Ruffini - National Review Online

Google’s privacy policy challenged in US court

A US public interest group asked a federal court on Wednesday to block Google Inc from consolidating more than 60 of its privacy policies, saying it could make it easier for advertisers to target users.

A lawsuit by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) alleged Google violated a settlement agreement reached with US regulators last March that requires consent from the user if Google collects information under one privacy policy and then changes the policy.

The group is asking the US District Court for the District of Columbia to issue a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction compelling the US Federal Trade Commission to enforce the consent order. “The Court must act now to prevent irreparable injury to EPIC and the public,” EPIC said in its court filing. EPIC’s lawsuit argues that Google misrepresented its privacy practices by not disclosing the benefits advertisers would reap from access to the consolidated data of users.

The aggregated data would allow advertisers to better target their ads, “and therefore Google’s new business practices increase the commercial value of a given user’s data,” the court filing said.

The group also challenged Google’s claim it is not collecting any new information. Aggregated data would give advertisers access to information about users that they were not privy to before, such as logged-in users’ YouTube search histories, EPIC said.


For more: Oman Tribune - the edge of knowledge

Europe's Internet revolt: protesters see threats in antipiracy treaty

Despite freezing conditions across much of the Continent, thousands are expected to the streets of European cities today – but the protests aren't about austerity measures, bailouts, or the Middle East. They are about an obscure international copyright agreement that protesters say threatens free speech online and the future of the Internet.

ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, follows the now-delayed US legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). Proponents say the agreement will protect the economic value of intellectual and artistic labor and create a framework to enforce existing laws. Opponents counter that it forces Internet service providers (ISPs) to police users, threatening individual freedom. Confusion reigns: previous drafts of ACTA would have required ISPs to disconnect users who repeatedly downloaded copyrighted material without permission, but the most recent versions leave the question of ISPs' legal liability to the participating countries.

Other controversial measures, such as searches for counterfeit goods at border crossings, which many feared would apply to the contents of laptops and MP3 players, are restricted to commercial goods shipping. (To read the document, click here

For more: Europe's Internet revolt: protesters see threats in antipiracy treaty - CSMonitor.com