Internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and host of others have been accused in the past on several occasions for either misuse of users private data or one abuse related to users privacy.
Some months ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergf faced heavy fire from the United States Federal Trade Commission and other bodies over its data collection practices and the 2014 Cambridge Analytica incident which leaked data of over 80 million users on the social media network.
June last year, Google announced that it will stop analyzing user's personal emails for targeted advertising purposes. However, the search engine giant has admitted that they are occasions when emails sent and received by Gmail users are accessed by third-party app developers because the Gmail account holder(s) granted the permission to third-party app developers.
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While it might be seen as the Gmail account holders fault to grant permission to third-party apps to access their private email account, Google still has a big role to play. According to a post by the Wall Street Journal, a New York-based marketing company Return Path, had access to 8,000 Gmail emails while developing tools for email marketers. In this case, Google is no different to Facebook who allowed Cambridge Analytica to harvest millions of its users personal data.
The Wall Street Journal termed the practice as "common" and "dirty secret" in the tech industry.
Google, in her defense insisted that her policies were transparent saying users were the ones that had control over which permission to grant to third-party developers to access their data
"Transparency and control have always been core data principles, and we're constantly working to ensure these principles are reflected in our products," a blog post from Google from read. "Before a non-Google app is able to access your data, we show a permission screen that clearly shows the types of data the app can access and how it can use the data.We strongly encourage you to review the permissions screen before granting access to any non-Google application."
Google went further to add; "No one at Google reads your Gmail, except in very specific cases where you ask us to and give consent, or where we need to for security purposes, such as investigating a bug or abuse."
The best advice for Google mail users is to limit or never grant third-party app developers access to their private mail. Always have a second mail that you can use for other purposes instead of your main mail address
Always use Gmail Security Check-up to see which third-party is connected to your account and what permission that you have granted to it. Users can remove or limit the app access