OK, I just signed up for a gmail account. I understand there are some concerns about security and privacy. This website details some of problems people have with gmail. Most of it seems to be in the “Well, Google could…” catagory, although I do see how the aproach Google is taking is not doing anything to allay these fears. The problems, from the above link:
Well, what they seem to be claiming is that all of your emails, both current AND deleted, are sitting in a file somewhere to be examined by government agencies. Forgive me if I don’t get up in arms about this, I am almost positive that this is the case already. Clandestinely, of course, but I am sure the NSA, CIA, heck, for all I know the TVA, have bots and data miners working overtime to spy on much of the email traffic that exists today, gmail or no gmail. I am not particularly thrilled about it, you understand, but I might as well try yelling at the tide, it’ll have about the same impact.
So…if you don’t trust Google, don’t send an email to a gmail account. If I dislike a company’s policies, I don’t buy their products. Simple. No need for me to try and force you not to buy them either.
This one I agree with. Cynicism about inevitable government intrusion on the web aside, I certainly do NOT like the idea of the RIAA, the NAACP, PETA or any other private organization having the ability to get their hands on my private emails and communications. This one has potential, but notice it’s all predicated on an “IF”. “If Google does this, If the courts do that”. Worrysome, but it merits nothing but further watching.
Blah, blah, blah. This one is stupid. We live in a consumer society, we’re bombarded with ads every day. Big freaking deal if an ad for Ginsu knives appears on the same page as a story about Nicole Simpson’s murder. I am a big boy and rely on myself to make judgements about ads and the like. I do not need Big Brother to hold my widdle hand and determine what’s apropriate.
So, those seem to be the arguements. What do y’all think? None of them really matter to me, as I’m using my gmail account simply as a place for the voice mails and email I get from clients enquiring about health insurance. I couldn’t really care if the FBI knows that on June 15th, Jane Doe wanted to know how I could add dental to her plan. It is interesting to note that when I went to delete a message, after doing so I got a note saying “Why delete? 1GB space is enough so you don’t have to!”, which certainly lends creedence to the idea that Google sees this as a database. Any thoughts?
I’m sure Google will just use it for advertisement purposes.
They COULD be much more sinister with it, but why risk it?
If it were the gov’t, I’d be concerned. :-p As is, it is a private company, and they can do whatever the hell they want with the information you let them have. Caveat emptor and all that.
Is there any reason to believe that Google is more likely to save emails you try to delete or create keyword databases than other web-based free email provider like Yahoo or MSN?
No, it is not the equivalent; it is worse. Nigger is a pejorative term used for all of one group, but it does not include with it the implication of prostitution or freakishness that she-male does.
Come on folks, if you are that determined to find offense, you seriously need to get some perspective, or the world is going to drive you crazy. I used a word-“she-male”- simply because it rhymed with gmail. I did not apply it to a single person, place or thing. I called nobody a she-male, I said nothing about she-males (and BTW, is that even a real word? Merriam-Webster online doesen’t list it; were I referng to an actual “she-male” the word I’d use would be “hermaphrodite” ). Why don’t you wait until I use a word as a pejorative before you react? Getting all upset simply because a word exists is just a tad over sensitive.
I’m with Weirddave on this one. ‘She-male’ is part of the language, even if it’s not in Merriam-Webster. It has a pretty clear meaning: it applies to persons with male genitalia who otherwise look like women, and have chosen the “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” approach to being in that state. The term has been popularized by such people, and by those who distrubute photos and vids in which the aforementioned persons flaunt their state. As such, it can hardly be considered a pejorative.
When a term is not in the dictionary, its definition may vary from person to person. I would not see the term ‘she-male’ as applicable to pre-op M-to-F transsexuals who are living as women and are not attempting to make their in-between physical state widely known, but others’ MMV.
And yeah, it was a joke. It wasn’t exactly inspired, but it wasn’t slamming transsexuals, either.
Getting back to the OP, the notion that with a service like Gmail, your old email lives out on a server, rather than on your own computer, does mean that it’s easier for the Feds to look at if they want to: like the cite says, they only need a subpoena, not a warrant. But that’s not Gmail-specific; it’s true of Yahoo! mail, or any similar email service. Gmail, with their search capabilities and 1 gig of storage, simply gives you more reason to keep more mail ‘out there’ than ever existed before.
I’m not exactly doing anything that would interest any law enforcement agencies, but I think I’ll continue to utilize a service that deletes my email from its database once I download it to my home computer.
Try a simple Google search for the term. After you wade through all the porn, you’ll find that every place the term is discussed it is recogonized as derogatory and highly offensive. Every. Single. Place. Don’t you wonder why it’s mostly used on porn sites?
I’m simply trying to alert you to the offensiveness of the term, I’m not accusing you of being intentionally rude. Now you get to choose what to do about it.
The only place, outside of porn sites, that I’ve ever really run into the term was when I was talking with a couple of the performers after the drag show at Allegro in Baltimore one Saturday night, they used the term quite freely when talking about themselves.
So, on one hand we have you, claiming that’s it’s always offensive, and on the other we have a group of transgendered people (maybe, I don’t really know, they might have been just cross dressers) freely using the term to refer to themselves without offense being taken. I am inclined to think that both are accurate, the difference is in the inflection and intent of use.
In any event, I thank you for the links, she-male isn’t a term I would have used pejoratively or when refering to someone else before anyway, I am now extra aware of how some people might be offended. I still maintain, however, that a word is just a word, and I have no intention of changing that stance. Weather the word is she-male, or nigger, of faggot, or cunt, or fuck or anything else, they are just words. It’s how the word is used that makes it offensive. Getting offended just because a certain word exists is the first step down the path to becoming offended at everything, and that’s not a good place to be. Our society is too far down that path already.
The term “shemale” was invented by pornographers. It refers to any person who appears to be female but has male genitalia and who is willing to make use of this fact to generate personal income by exploiting her status through pornography or prostitution. The term is extremely derogatory, on a par with “whore”. The only people I have ever known to refer to themselves as “shemales” are transsexual prostitutes and that small fraction of early-term pre-op transsexuals who originally found out about transsexuality through porn and do not realize how offensive the term is. Most of the latter quit using it once they realize what the term means. In any case, it is not a term of our own, but rather one created for us by those people who choose to exploit us. And it is one that we have not chosen to “reclaim” the way former pejoratives like “dyke” have been.
It is not true that a transsexual who makes no effort to conceal that she is transsexual is a “shemale”. To qualify as a shemale, one must be involved in the sex industry. Calling anyone else a “shemale” is extremely offensive, and the term is loaded and should be used with at least as much care as one would use “nigger”. I don’t think anyone here would find a casual use of the term “nigger” in a thread title appropriate, even as a joke.
It was, however, in extremely bad taste.
It also strikes an unpleasant chord: there are, in fact, some very troubling privacy concerns right now for transsexuals. I just got a notice (from a trans activist list I’m on) that the SSA is now in the practice of outing transsexuals to their employers: if the gender reported by the employer (which would consistent with what the employee reported and with state law) differs from what the SSA has on record, they will send a letter to the employer informing them of the discrepancy. Since most states allow a change of legal gender far more easily than SSA does (SSA requires an affadavit from a surgeon attesting to removal of the gonads; most states have far less stringent requirements), this can easily have the effect of outing a transsexual who is not already out to her (or his) employer. There are many other privacy issues associated with transsexuality and I personally think this “joke” makes ill light of what, to us, is a very serious concern. In comparison, the privacy issues related to GMail really are “much ado about nothing”.
Then don’t you think that you have much more important things to worry about than rather someone says she-male-rhymes-with-gmail on a message board?
In any event, lissener pointed out to me that the proper thing to do when you accidentally offend someone is to say “my bad”. He is absolutely correct. Mea culpa to anyone who found the word she-male offensive, it was certainly not intended that way. I prolly only used it because I had just gotten done scanning my junk mail folder before deleting the spam, guess what words several of the subject titles included? When I reached for a rhyme, there it was, right on the top of my brain.
I think these privacy concerns about Gmail are all a bit silly.
Sure, when you delete an email, it stays around on their hard drives for a while; when you delete a file from your computer, it stays around on your hard drive, too. The same is true of any email provider, web host, message board, etc.
They have no reason to keep a database of keywords for each account, because their ad serving technology is entirely dynamic. If The Man handed Google a subpoena looking for every user who had used the keywords “mp3 download”, it might be a little easier for Google to come up with the list if they had a keyword database, but it doesn’t mean Google would have any more of an obligation to do so.