Google has today announced that they will stop scanning your gmail to personalise ads, instead announcing they will rely on user settings.
The change is to better align Gmail with G Suite, which is now being used by more than 3 million companies worldwide. G Suite users are not subject to email scans, and now this is being applied to Gmail customers.
You’ll still see ads, but they’ll be based on users’ settings. Google reminds users that they can change those settings at any time, as well as completely turn off ad personalisation under myaccount.google.com. This change will bring Gmail into line with all of Google’s other products.
With more than 1.2 billion users, Gmail is one of the largest mail services around. In their announcement, Google reminds us that ‘Google will keep privacy and security paramount’.
If you’ve ever wanted more control of ads you see in Gmail, including turning off tracking completely, then you’ll be able to do so. Google will flip the switch later this year, but if you head to myaccount.google.com right now, you can check out what your settings are set for.
I sometimes worry that my google (“Apps”) account could be accidentally erased, as my life is much speeded up because google autocompletes it. I’m not worried because I’d lose the emails and calendar history – I back those up fairly frequently. And I’m not worried about the email address – it’s my own domain hosted through google. I’m worried because I’d have to start again with customising an entire google universe! From maps and navigation history, to the least-offensive ads, search history, relevant search results etc. [This comment is *related* to ad personalisation through gmail (i.e. the topic of the… Read more »