For the 400 million people who use Gmail for their email needs, there's free email and huge storage.
And no guarantee of privacy whatsoever.
A court briefing obtained by the Consumer Watchdog website reveals that Google's lawyers feel that people who "turn over information to third parties shouldn't expect that information to remain private," according to Business Insider.
In this case, a 1979 court ruling is applicable to email, which is "information... voluntarily turn[ed] over to third parties," according to a court filing made by Google lawyers.
"Just as a sender of a letter to a busines colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient's assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipients ECS provider in the course of delivery," the filing reads.
"Google has finally admitted they dont respect privacy," said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's privacy chief. "If you care about yoru email correspondents' privacy, don't use Gmail."
Google processes emails in order to provide relevant ads and filter out spam, the company says.
The complaint says that Google in fact tries to "capture the authors' actual thoughts for Google's secret use," Business Insider reported.
