Tech Giants exploiting your DATA? Not anymore

The majority of us accept Google’s outrageous abuses of our personal information as the new normal because it’s all we’ve ever known. Let’s envision a scenario in which Google controls the Postal Service as a fun thought experiment to illustrate exactly how intrusive Google’s tactics are.

WAIT –  We are scanning your information

Your outgoing mail would be collected by postal workers, but that’s where things normally stop. The postal workers would access and scan your letter as soon as they collected it. They would try to determine how to improve their postal service using the data from those early scans. After that, they would return and read your emails. In order to get your letter to the intended recipient, they would finally reattach it. Both incoming and outgoing mail would be handled in the same way.

Reading your letter would provide information that would be taken back to the main post office. There, postal workers would filter through the data that could be of interest to other US government organizations.

Perhaps you highlighted a significant purchase or a new, cash-intensive source of income. The IRS would adore to be made aware of that!

Without your permission, all of this information—your information—would be given to those organizations and others. You wouldn’t be there to defend yourself, give an explanation, or define the difference between humor and seriousness. Everything would be carried out behind your back and without your awareness.

Do you need their info? – Here it is

However, they wouldn’t remain there. They would next search for anything that would be valuable to parties other than the US government, including companies, other countries, and anybody else. Perhaps in a letter to your friend, you indicated that you recently bought a new car. The postal service would give that data to a business that offers car insurance, and that business would use it to address you in its advertisements. 

Though unnerving, that is often harmless. The post office, however, wouldn’t stop at just perusing your casual letters to friends and family. Everything would be reviewed by them.

A healthcare professional sends you a letter with details on a potential course of treatment? After reading it, they would trade any information to whoever they pleased, including information about your health, your insurance, and your debt repayment history. You get an email from an insurance company informing you that your rates are increasing or that they’ve chosen not to accept your request for cover. That sounds like the kind of information that an additional insurance company could be ready to splurge in order to alter their rate.

Keep it PRIVATE

Many of us use email to exchange the same kinds of private info that we do via registered post due to its simplicity and speed. You don’t want Google to read your letter and invade your privacy, just like you don’t want the postal service to do it.

We don’t intend to vilify Google. Businesses optimize for their business models despite Gmail’s shady conduct. End-to-end encryption is perhaps the only method to ensure that your private conversations are entirely secure.

End-to-end encryption ensures that no one can ever access the information you exchange during transmission. This is currently widely accessible for texting on services like WhatsApp and other apps. Facebook officially confirmed earlier this year that it will transition its messaging services to end-to-end encryption as well.

Canary safeguards your email

If you currently use Canary Mail, you are safe-guarded. You are protected from these cyberattacks by Canary Mail’s unique use of end-to-end encryption methods. If you don’t already have Canary Mail, download it now and start encrypting your emails from beginning to end. Canary Mail is developed to be the most user-friendly encryption email client for both commercial and personal users, as well as to effortlessly fit into existing enterprise routines.

Learn more about CanaryMail.