Gmail reportedly lets third-party app developers read user emails

As if Facebook’s data infringement wasn’t enough, Google’s Gmail too has reportedly violated users’ data by permitting outside app developers and employees to read people’s emails.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, third-party app developers can get access to private Gmail messages with letting their employees read them too. The report has specified two apps including ‘Return Path’ and ‘Edison Software’. The former app analyzes users’ inbox and gathers data for marketers.

The report said that its employees read around 8,000 user emails two years ago and help develop company’s software. The latter app helps users manage their emails, but it too let its employees read thousands of email for training its ‘Smart Reply’ feature, wrote CNET.

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CEO of Edison Software, Mikael Berner admitted that its employees have been reading emails as an effort to build the new feature, but said they have now stopped the practice and ‘expunged’ all such data. Other companies also said that their employees read millions of emails and it was a ‘common practice’. Google, however, declined to comment.

Though Google promised to stop scanning users’ inboxes, yet it failed to do so from outside software developers. The report stated that users who signed up for email-based services such as shopping price comparisons, and automated travel-itinerary planners are most at the risk of having their privacy violated. It also said that people signing up for these services agreed to give access to their inboxes as part of the opt-in process, wrote Business Insider.

Numerous app developers electronically scan people’s inboxes who signed up for these services or have their employees read the emails. Citing a Google representative, the report mentioned that Google have third-party app developers pass a selection process and makes sure that they accept privacy agreement and have strict rules, which the employees must adhere to for handling of emails.

Return Path said in a blog post, “Any time our engineers or data scientists personally review emails in our panel (which again, is completely consistent with our policies), we take great care to limit who has access to the data, supervise all access to the data.”