Gmail is also the most hefty data collector, says Yen. “Microsoft says it doesn’t look at the content of emails in Outlook to serve you ads, but it is open about collecting and using metadata about user activity across all of its services for advertising.” ![]() “Any mainstream, consumer-level account is only free in that you don’t pay it with money, but with data,” Fielding says. ![]() Like Gmail, Microsoft’s Outlook is embedded in the firm’s ecosystem and integrated with its other services. Other mainstream email providers aren’t much more private. “In Europe, those protections cover email tracking as well, but there hasn’t been much enforcement in this area.” Gmail v other email services “People are aware of cookies because of privacy and data protection law – which states that planting trackers on your device requires your consent, and you have the right to be told about what is happening to your data,” says Fielding. Most people are becoming aware of tracking as they visit websites due to regulation such as the EU’s ePrivacy Directive and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Part of the problem is a lack of regulatory enforcement around email data collection and tracking. 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.” “Practically everything you do online will feed back to Google.” “Gmail becomes a window into your entire online life because of how wide and deep their surveillance architecture goes,” Fielding says. 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. Much of the information collected by Gmail and shared with advertisers is metadata – data about data. 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.Įvery 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. 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.Īlthough Google stopped scanning email content to tailor ads in 2017, last year the company started showing shopping ads in Gmail. More data is used for analytics – in Google’s words, “to build better services” – including purchase history, location, email address, photos and search history. Many email clients make it possible to manage all your emails and contacts from multiple accounts easily in one unified Inbox, and some can even be extended with third-party extensions or integrated with other applications.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. They tend to be much better integrated with the operating system(s) they are designed for, and their superior responsiveness makes them much more suited for handling heavy email loads on a regular basis. But when we use the term email client in this article, we only mean those email clients that can be installed on a desktop computer or a mobile device-not web-based email clients that are hosted remotely and are accessible only from a web browser.ĭesktop email clients have several major advantages over their web-based counterparts. We use clunky web interfaces that are not meant for professional use, we accept outdated applications as if alternatives didn’t exist, and we settle for the default email apps on our mobile devices even though app stores are full of excellent third-party email apps.īroadly speaking, an email client is a computer program used to access and manage a user’s email. ![]() And if you’re someone whose work involves communication with customers, clients, and coworkers, the chances are that you deal with emails all the time.Įven though we spend so much time writing, forwarding, and managing emails, we hardly ever pause for a moment and think about how we could improve our emailing experience. If you’re like most people, you probably check your email at least once every day. What Is an Email Client and Why Should I Use One?
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