Can Google Read Your Email?

I was lately wondering if the G-Mail e-mail’s I send or receive are really personal and secure or if some one from Google has access to them. Can anyone from Google team, G-Mail developers or anyone at the other side can read my e-mails? The excitement gave me an idea of searching about this on Google and the first result led me to Labnol, one of the best technology blogs.

Well the answer may be yes to prevent illegal exchange of information, tracking some accounts for security measures, tracking account of people with criminal history, bad credit records, crime suspects, etc. Of course on Government interference Google ma y be forced to divulge details of a person’s Gmail account.

These were just my assumptions or you can regard it as an unofficial answer to this question.

Here’s what one of the past Google employee, the one behind Google Apps says about Google reading your emails:

A small number of GMail-related engineers have access to the servers as a matter of necessity to do their jobs; a very small number of people actually access the contents as a matter of necessity to do their jobs, and even then, almost always only the associated metadata. The rest have to file a request and justify any access they ever need, which is extremely rare. All have to sign paperwork re users’ privacy at the risk of dismissal & legal action, knowing that whatever they do is discoverable. And ultimately, an internal culture of respecting users’ privacy helps keep one another in check.

So the risk is never zero, but minimized by the factors above.

So that means someone may be reading our e-mails when it’s really necessary, but that’s rare. And if an employee wants to gain access to any account or e-mail, he is supposed to file a request and the employee will only be allowed to see a user’s Gmail account after going through a strict process. He will be bound by terms to safeguard user privacy and in case he fails to do that, he may be punished.

So this means that your Gmail account isn’t as private as you think. It’s being read by someone at the other end just to carry out maintenance and not for any personal gains!

So will you still use Gmail or are you thinking of shifting to another email provider? In case you are thinking of shifting to a new email provider, remember one thing. Almost all email providers have access to your emails so I don’t think you should delete your Gmail account just because someone from Google is reading your emails because its done by mostly higher officials and done only when needed. But in case you have decided to shift from Google, here’s how you can delete Gmail account.

Can Google Read Your Email?

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