‘Companies behind Gmail add-ons let employees read email’

According to research by The Wall Street Journal, Google allows hundreds of software developers to scan the content of emails from Gmail users. This concerns users who have registered for certain e-mail services.

According to the WSJ, Google is doing little to monitor these third-party app developers’ activities, including training their systems and computers to read users’ emails. In some cases, employees of these companies would also have read emails. The WSJ says it has spoken with more than 24 current employees and ex-employees of these companies, which make apps for email.

This concerns, for example, the companies Return Path and Edison Software. The former collects data for marketers by scanning the inboxes of the two million users who signed up for one of the company’s free apps via Gmail or a Yahoo email address. Normally, computers take care of this scanning process, but two years ago, employees would have read 8,000 unfiltered emails to improve the company’s software.

At Edison Software, a Gmail developer creating a mobile app for reading and organizing emails, hundreds of users’ emails were reviewed to build new functionality. The company’s CEO has confirmed this. According to the WSJ, neither Return Path nor Edison Software specifically asked users for permission to read the emails; this practice is, according to the companies, permissible, in view of the user agreements. Also, both companies say there are strict protocols for which employees can access the emails.

Google itself says it only reads emails in very specific cases and only if users have requested it. The company says it manually checks every developer and app that wants access to Gmail. However, a co-founder of Contactually reports that he has seen no evidence of human control by Google.

A year ago, Google announced it would stop scanning Gmail messages for personalized ads. The search giant previously did this to tailor ads to users’ profiles.