http://michaeldundas.com/2009/03/07/centralization-of-data-and-privacy/ A place to record my thoughts and musings. Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:13:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://michaeldundas.com/2009/03/07/centralization-of-data-and-privacy/comment-page-1/#comment-1152 Outsourcing I.T. to Google – Part I – The Concerns « Michael N. Dundas Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:23:03 +0000 http://kaizen.michaeldundas.com/?p=225#comment-1152 [...] I have been looking at Gmail and the other Google services for a completely different reasons, but I have to say that I agree with all his points.  The only reason I can think of that you would not want Google to manage your corporate email would be control reasons.  You no longer have physical control of the servers and functionality that house your email.  This could be a problem for certain groups or businesses where privacy is extremely important as well as potential repercussions if the emails were to become public.  Google states they give you complete control over your email on their system, but that statement is technically not completely truthful.   Google also has access to your emails.  Suppose an employee of Google read and extracted your emails.   Sure Google would discipline and probably let the employee go assuming they could find out who was responsible, but what if the impact is large?  What if for example, the emails of a women’s shelter using the Gmail service were published on the Internet?  What about emails from a law firm concerning a sensitive and active court case were to be posted?  Can you sue Google?  And even if you are successful, it doesn’t change the impact of those emails becoming public.   I have commented similar privacy implications before here. [...] [...] I have been looking at Gmail and the other Google services for a completely different reasons, but I have to say that I agree with all his points.  The only reason I can think of that you would not want Google to manage your corporate email would be control reasons.  You no longer have physical control of the servers and functionality that house your email.  This could be a problem for certain groups or businesses where privacy is extremely important as well as potential repercussions if the emails were to become public.  Google states they give you complete control over your email on their system, but that statement is technically not completely truthful.   Google also has access to your emails.  Suppose an employee of Google read and extracted your emails.   Sure Google would discipline and probably let the employee go assuming they could find out who was responsible, but what if the impact is large?  What if for example, the emails of a women’s shelter using the Gmail service were published on the Internet?  What about emails from a law firm concerning a sensitive and active court case were to be posted?  Can you sue Google?  And even if you are successful, it doesn’t change the impact of those emails becoming public.   I have commented similar privacy implications before here. [...]

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