Google responds to allegations of Gmail snooping

Himanshu Arora

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Last week TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington took to his personal blog to say he's "nearly certain" that Google accessed his Gmail account to get hold of the identity of an insider who leaked information to him. In a statement to Re/Code, Google general counsel Kent Walker has now rebuffed those cliams.

“While our terms of service might legally permit such access, we have never done this and it’s hard for me to imagine circumstances where we would investigate a leak in that way”, he said.

Arrington's accusation comes on the heels of the recent admission by Microsoft that they did snoop on a Hotmail account to trace the identity of an employee who leaked Windows 8 details. He called the move 'evil and shortsighted' but said the only surprise is that they admitted it.

According to Arrington's account, a few years back after he broke a major story about Google, his source approached him at a party and said they had been asked by the search giant if they were the source. Although initially the source denied it Google had the actual email proving otherwise.

Although the source communicated with Arrington from a non-Google email account, Arrington himself was using Gmail at the time.

A little while after that his source was no longer employed by Google, he says, adding that he was reluctant to say anything at the time because he didn’t want people to be afraid to share information with TechCrunch.

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“While our terms of service might legally permit such access, we have never done this" on yeah, I really believe you, it should not be legal plain and simple "and it’s hard for me to imagine circumstances where we would investigate a leak in that way” I can easily imagine it, perhaps if it was done the person doing it had more imagination than the spokesman for Google
 
Is this case in the same category as those email snooping of employees email by their American companies?
 
@misor
Since everyone want to deliver you content based upon 'interests', I guess it also means they are already reading.
 
To be honest you have to be extremely stupid to be a google employee and still use googles gmail to send secret info about google to others...
 
How can snooping on a reporter's email not be illegal? Even if Google owns Gmail, it should not be legal or even allowed in their privacy agreement that they can read your emails to find conversations they don't like to target people even if they work for them.
 
"Although the source communicated with Arrington from a non-Google email account, Arrington himself was using Gmail at the time."

It's one thing to snoop on your employee's work email, it's another to snoop on a reporter's email that he sent it to just because you own the technology. That's corporate spying and something they should have given to the cops and requested with a subpoena.
 
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