<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/09/how-private-is-your-gmail...> Most people are aware of the cookies that track them across the web, and the privacy-invading practices of Google search, but did you know Google’s email service, Gmail, collects large amounts of data too? This was recently put into stark focus for iPhone users when Gmail published its app “privacy label” – a self-declared breakdown of the data it collects and shares with advertisers as part of a new stipulation on the Apple App Store. According to the label, those that grant the appropriate permission to the iOS Gmail app can expect Google to share information including their approximate location, user ID – an identifier used to anonymously track them – and data about the ads they have viewed online with advertisers. More data is used for analytics – in Google’s words, “to build better services” – including purchase history, location, email address, photos and search history. Gmail is by far the most popular email service, with more than 1.5 billion active users, compared with 400 million using Microsoft Outlook and 225 million signed up to Yahoo Mail. Although Google stopped scanning email content to tailor ads in 2017, last year the company started showing shopping ads in Gmail. And it still scans emails to facilitate so-called smart features such as the ability to add holiday bookings or deliveries straight to your calendar, or to autocomplete suggestions. Every way you interact with your Gmail account can be monitored, such as the dates and times you email at, who you are talking to, and topics you choose to email about, says Rowenna Fielding, founder of privacy consultancy Miss IG Geek. How Google uses your data Much of the information collected by Gmail and shared with advertisers is metadata – data about data. But if you carry cookies from other Google services, your activity can be correlated or “fingerprinted” from associated products such as Google Maps and YouTube. “Gmail becomes a window into your entire online life because of how wide and deep their surveillance architecture goes,” Fielding says. “Practically everything you do online will feed back to Google.” Google claims none of the data collected from scanning emails for purchase information, delivery tracking numbers and flight bookings is used for advertising, but as Andy Yen, founder and CEO of secure email service ProtonMail says: “It remains a fact that Google keeps a record of these events and logs them regardless.” [...]