If you think your emails are safe and private, even for your porn, you may way to reconsider that train of thought. Recently, Google has had a man arrested for child pornography by checking into his email.
John Henry Skillern is a 41-year old man is registered sex offender from Houston, Texas and works at a Denny's food joint in Pasadena. Previously in 1994, he was convicted of sexual assault on a child and currently is being held in prison with a $200,000 bond.
Since 2006, Google has been known to advocate against online child abuse and has done what it can to block, restrain or even prevent the search of child pornography in its databases. The leader in search engines, upon detecting images of child pornography in his email, sent a report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. By that alone, it is also clear that the search engine mogul has also been monitoring and looking into the emails of its clients.
As much as Google has expressed good intentions, some find the company's act a breach in their user's privacy and personal space as well as Google's 'policing' action in the World Wide Web. According to Emma Carr, who is the acting direct of Big Brother Watch which is a privacy lobby group, it is not strange for companies to be convicted to privacy breaches despite US law stating that all US companies must report suspected acts of child abuse however she further states that Google should make their intentions more clear especially on what kind of procedures and safeguards are being used.
Recently Google has updated their Terms of Service due to a failed class-action lawsuit filed against their email scanning practices last April.
