In July 2012, some California residents filed two class action lawsuits against

Google and Yahoo! claiming that they illegally intercept emails sent by individu
al non-Gmail or non-Yahoo! subscribers to Gmail and Yahoo! subscribers without t
heir knowledge, consent or permission.[135] A motion filed by Google's attorneys
in the case concedes that Gmail users have "no legitimate expectation of privac
y".[136]
In 2013, Microsoft launched an advertising campaign to attack Google for scannin
g email messages, arguing that most consumers are not aware that Google monitors
their personal messages to deliver targeted ads.[137] Microsoft claims that its
email service Outlook does not scan the contents of messages and a Microsoft sp
okesperson called the issue of privacy "Google's kryptonite."[137] Other concern
s include the unlimited period for data retention that Google's policies allow,
and the potential for unintended secondary uses of the information Gmail collect
s and stores.[138]
A court filing uncovered by advocacy group Consumer Watchdog in August 2013 reve
aled that Google stated in a court filing that no "reasonable expectation" exist
s among Gmail users in regard to the assured confidentiality of their emails.[13
9] In response to a lawsuit filed in May 2013, Google explained:
"... all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be su
bject to automated processing ... Just as a sender of a letter to a business col
league cannot be surprised that the recipient's assistant opens the letter, peop
le who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are
processed by the recipient's ECS [electronic communications service] provider i
n the course of delivery.[139]
A Google spokesperson stated to the media on August 15, 2013 that the corporatio
n takes the privacy and security concerns of Gmail users "very seriously."[139]
Google updated its terms of service for Gmail in April 2014 to create full trans
parency for its users in regard to the scanning of email content. The relevant r
evision states: "Our automated systems analyse your content (including emails) t
o provide you personally relevant product features, such as customised search re
sults, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occur
s as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored." A Google spokesperso
n explained that the corporation wishes for its policies "to be simple and easy
for users to understand." In response to the update, Jim Killock, executive dire
ctor of the Open Rights Group, stated: "The really dangerous things that Google
is doing are things like the information held in Analytics, cookies in advertisi
ng and the profiling that it is able to do on individual accounts".[140] In 2004
, privacy advocates also regarded the lack of disclosed data retention and corre
lation policies as problematic. Google has the ability to combine information co
ntained in a person's email messages with information from Internet searches. Go
ogle had not confirmed how long such information is kept or how it can be used.
One of the concerns was that it could be of interest to law enforcement agencies
. More than 30 privacy and civil liberties organizations urged Google to suspend
Gmail service until these issues would be resolved.[141]
Other privacy issues
Gmail's privacy policy used to contain the clause: "residual copies of deleted m
essages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active server
s and may remain in our offline backup systems". However, this statement does no
t appear in Gmail's current[when?] privacy policy. Less specifically, Google has
stated that in 2007 they will "make reasonable efforts to remove deleted inform
ation from our systems as quickly as is practical."[142][143]
Gmail accounts of human rights activists in China were hacked in sophisticated a
ttacks
thought to use phishing and exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer[

144][145][146]
in late 2009. Any (web mail or other) mail system which stores an
d retains user's email contents is an attractive target for such attacks, but Gm
ail is popular with security-conscious users because of its early HTTPS secure (
encrypted) connection support, and its more-recent HTTPS-only default setting.[6
][147]
The launch of Google Buzz as an opt-out social networking service immediately dr
ew criticism for violating user privacy because it automatically allowed Gmail u
sers' contacts to view their other contacts. Buzz was discontinued in December 2
011.[148][149]
In December 2013, Gmail made changes in how images are displayed, to improve pro
tection against insecure content and (by default) remove the necessity for recip
ients to click the "display images" confirmation.[150] Gmail now serves all imag
es through Google's own secure proxy servers. It also removed the ability for em
ail marketers to track IP, user agent, if it was a mobile open or which mobile d
evice was used.[151] At the same time, the default behavior was changed to show
images without user confirmation, thereby enabling senders to track the time whe
n an email is first opened by the recipient, by inserting tracking pixels.[152]
While media such as Wired criticized the change as weakening user privacy, email
marketing service provider MailChimp welcomed the improved capability to track
previously invisible email subscribers.[152]
A new Gmail feature was launched in January 2014, whereby users can email people
with Google+ accounts even though they do not know the email address of the rec
ipient. Marc Rotenberg, President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center,
called the feature "troubling". The new feature is enabled by default but can be
disabled.[153]
Technical limitations
Gmail does not allow users to send or receive executable files or archives conta
ining executable files if it recognizes the file extension as one used for execu
table files or archives.[70][154]
By design, Gmail does not deliver all of a user's emails. When downloading mail
through POP or IMAP access, Gmail fails to deliver messages that users have sent
to themselves if the client has a copy of it already.[155] It also does not del
iver to a user's inbox (via any access interface) those messages that users have
sent to mailing lists and which they might expect to receive back via the maili
ng list.[156]
Gmail normally sorts email only by conversations (threads), which can be a probl
em for large conversations. For example, if a user sends a query to a large grou
p of people, all of the responses are stored in a single conversation that is im
possible to break apart. There is no way to search for responses from one user w
ithout getting the entire conversation. While deletion of individual emails is p
ossible, most operations, such as archiving and labeling, can be performed only
on whole conversations. Conversations cannot be split up or combined. As a resul
t of complaints from some users, Google made conversation view optional starting
September 29, 2010. The change was only made for the web app. The mobile app do
not offer any option for disabling conversation view. There is currently no met
hod to split individual conversations in any Gmail app.
Gmail does not recognize the "." character in email addresses. This can lead to
confusion with email sent to the wrong person. Gmail acknowledges this in their
own help documents.[157]
Outages
Gmail has been unavailable on several occasions. On February 24, 2009, the Gmail
service was offline for 2 hours and 30 minutes, preventing millions of users fr

om accessing their accounts. People who rely entirely on Gmail for business purp
oses complained about these outages. [158][159] Another outage occurred on Septe
mber 1, 2009. Later that day, a Google vice president, Ben Treynor, explained th
at the problem, which ultimately resulted in about 100 minutes of outage, was ca
used by overloaded routers, triggered by a routine configuration change which ad
ded more router load than expected. Treynor wrote, "Gmail remains more than 99.9
% available to all users, and we're committed to keeping events like today's not
able for their rarity."[160][161]
In 2009, Google continued to experience outages across its network, leaving user
s without access to their email, calendars, and virtual files.[162]
Key outage dates include:
Date
Outage details Affected users
January 24, 2014
Gmail widespread outage.
Global outage that laste
d approximately 50 minutes for 10 percent of users. Google apologized for the ou
tage, which, it reported, lasted 25 to 55 minutes and affected as many as 10% of
users.[163][164][165]
September 23, 2013
Gmail outage[166]
"less than 50 percent"[167]
May 2, 8 and 13, 2013 Users in India, Middle East and South East Asia faced Gm
ail outage with an error 502[168][169][170]
April 17, 2012 Gmail outage[171]
5.25 million[172]
February 27/28, 2011
Gmail outage. Gmail users after signing in found their G
mail inbox, contact empty.[173]
1.5 million[174]
September 24, 2009
Gmail outage. Gmail accounts were unavailable, users cou
ld not access their accounts.[175]
Gmail did not mention exact number, in t
heir blog they posted a 'small subset of users' were affected with this outage.[
175]
September 1, 2009
Gmail outage[162]
May 14, 2009
Google network outage. For some users Gmail became extremely slo
w. In some cases, Google services were reported to have completely stopped worki
ng.[176]
March 9, 2009 Gmail outage[162]
August 7, 2008 Gmail and Google Apps outage. Accounts affected by a 502 error o
n login.[177]
On behalf of
Prior to July 2009, any email sent through the Gmail interface included the Gmai
l.com address as the "sender", even if it was sent with a custom email address a
s "from". For example, an email sent with an external "from" address using Gmail
could be displayed to a receiving email client user as From user@gmail.com on b
ehalf of user@OtherDomainEmailAddress.com (the display used by versions of Micro
soft Outlook). By exposing the Gmail address, Google claimed that this would "he
lp prevent mail from being marked as spam".[178] A number of Gmail users complai
ned that this implementation was both a privacy concern and a professionalism pr
oblem.[179]
On July 30, 2009, Gmail announced an update to resolve this issue.[180] The upda
ted custom 'From:' feature allows users to send messages from Gmail using a cust
om SMTP server, instead of Gmail's.[181] However, the issue is still present for
users whose custom email address is a second Gmail account, rather than an acco
unt on a separate domain.[182]
See also
Portal icon
Google portal
Portal icon
Internet portal
List of Google products
Comparison of webmail providers
Comparison of mail servers

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