Yes! The search giant Google(NASDAQ: GOOG) silently but orderly keeps an eye on all the searches and emails for any illegal activities. By it’s this feature Google reported the case of a child abuse and got him arrested.
In a convict’s Gmail account, it was spotted by google in its automated search that he had images of a young girl. The convict has stored this in his gmail account. Google reported this to the US non-profit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Then after a police investigation the guy was arrested. The email was being sent from the account of John Henry Skillern.
Detective David Nettles of the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce said: “He was keeping it inside of his email. I can’t see that information; I can’t see that photo, but Google can. He was trying to get around getting caught; he was trying to keep it inside his email.” He also said ” I really don’t know how they do their job. But I’m just glad they do it.”
Google told that it did not reveal any technical information of any individual case or give exact details of the nature of the searches that it carries out.
According to previous reports it has been found that google’s automatic image search searches image by searching the hash tags in the image instead of searching the real files.
In April google updated its terms to say: “Our automated systems analyse your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customised search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.”
Google’s chief legal officer said previously that Google helps fund the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). This is a foundation which tasks to proactively identifying child abuse images that Google can then remove from our search engine.
Encrypt your email if you have a problem with google, not that hard really.
It is hard when goohle passes all of its encryption keys on to the nsa. That’s been documented.
Its not about having nothing to hide its about them reading your private email.
Internet has made it easier for these monsters to do what they do as well as spread it. I don’t have anything to hide in my email, it makes me feel better knowing some of these awful people can be caught.
those who are willing to sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither – Ben Franklin
The fact that they read your mail and searches should be enough to make everyone never use Google.
I don’t like the idea at all, either…however, I suspect that Google as well as the NSA and other agencies have “trigger words” that cause them to actually LOOK at people’s email. If the email doesn’t contain any of those trigger words, they very likely don’t look at it. The person who has to read all my emails probably falls asleep at his job, it’s so boring. LOL