These Gmail applications allow other people to read their mail

Be careful with the applications you use in your Gmail email, because they can give you some serious upset. And if not, look at what has happened with these applications, which apparently have had access to users' private mail.

First of all, you should know (especially if you've never used them before) that there are third-party applications that can function as services for Google's GmailWhat are they for? Well, to manage your purchases, organize your trips, etc.To do this, some developers have access to your email messages, so they can read them if you give them permission.

Now, a report published in The Wall Street Journal reveals that some of these companies or developers would have allowed their employees to read part of these emails. Their goal is to tame the service so that it works better But where is the privacy of users?

These are the prying apps

The report published by this means reveals the names of two applications. The first is called Return Path and it is an application that analyzes users' inboxes, in order to collect data and then provide it to different vendors. According to The Wall Street Journal, employees of this company lread about 8.000 emails from users to help the firm develop its software. This happened a couple of years ago.

But this would not be all. In the news published by this means, the name of another application has emerged, in this case called Edison Software, whose mission would be to help users manage their email. In this case, it seems that the corporation allows its employees to read thousands and thousands of emails. Its objective? Train the application to improve its ability to provide intelligent responses

They allege that they had the consent of the users

The news is shocking, because when we use one of these applications we do give our consent, but we don't expect it to be a human eye scrutinizing our conversations.They allege that they had the permission of the users However, it is very likely that they were not sure that they were fully opening the doors of their privacy to people alien to his life.

But this is not a problem that exclusively affects users of these applications. Some time ago, just in 2017, Google also became the protagonist of a similar controversy.

At that time, and to shelve the controversy, the Mountain View company announced that it would stop reading emails from Gmail users to get data that would later would be sold to advertisers, in order to better target their potential audience.

For the firms involved in the matter, reading users' email is a fundamental issue in order to develop their technologies. As they say in Return Path, artificial intelligence comes from human intelligence, so its engineers check emails personally to achieve their goals.They say, yes, that they are careful when it comes to limiting who in their company has access to this data.

For its part, from Edison, the other company involved, the review tasks have been carried out in a fully justified manner. However, they explain in a statement, they have already stopped reading email from Gmail users Is it for something?