Students Sue Google for Monitoring Their Emails

In a challenge to one of Google's more controversial practices, a group of students in California are suing Google, claiming that the company's monitoring of Gmail violates federal and state privacy laws.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is currently hearing the complaint from nine students whose emails were subject to Google surveillance because Gmail is a component of Apps for Education. Apps for Education is a suite of free, web-based education tools that has some 30 million users worldwide, most of whom are students under 18 exposed to the software via their schools.

A Google rep told Education Week that the company scans and indexes emails from all Apps for Education users. The company uses the data for potential advertising, among other purposes.

Education Week speculates that the case could have "major implications" for how the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act [FERPA] is interpreted. FERPA, which was issued in 1974, ensures the privacy of records of students under the age of 18. The Department of Education'srecent guidance on the issue also appears to indirectly state that Google's Gmail practices run afoul of FERPA.

The students are seeking class-action certification for the case.  

If successful, that could lead to a payment to millions of Gmail users. However, in a victory for Google, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday declined to combine other related suits against Google's Gmail on similar grounds into one class-action suit.Google's surveillance of Gmail for advertising purposes has raised hackles among privacy advocates. In particular, the ElectronicPrivacy Information Center (EPIC) points out that even if Gmail users agree to Google's terms, that doesn't mean that non-subscribers who email with them do. "Non-subscribers have not consented and indeed may not even be aware that their communications are being analyzed or that a profile may be compiled of him or her," states anFAQ on EPIC on the subject. EPIC also takes issue with Google's ability to compile a detailed profile of a Gmail user by linking their Gmail data with cookies used by Google's search engine. Google has said that it doesn't cross-reference such data.

Microsoft has also criticized Google's Gmail practices in its Scroogled campaign, contrasting Google's data mining with Microsoft's Outlook, which doesn't use email data to serve users ads.

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Gmail Will Never Ask You to 'Display Images Below' Again

Gmail will no longer wait for your permission to "display images below."
Google rolled out improvements to how Gmail handles images on Thursday, specifically related to its automatic display of pictures within emails. From now on, you'll never see that pesky prompt again.
The message was initially aimed to protect Gmail users from unknown senders who may try to compromise the security of your computer or mobile device using images.

Now, all images are checked for viruses and malware ahead of time, so it doesn't matter whether the picture came from someone you know. Google is now serving images through its own secure proxy servers, instead of directly from external host servers.
Users who still want to give Google an OK before viewing an image can select the “Ask before displaying external images” under the general tab in settings.
The update is available on the desktop version of Gmail on Thursday and will come to mobile apps in early 2014.

Resizing Options

Gmail users can now control the density of their inbox. Depending on your preference of white space, you choose manually between three sizes: comfortable, cozy or compact.

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Google: We're Winning Against Phishing and Spam Emails

Google can't say "mission accomplished" just yet, but the search giant made it clear that the Internet is winning its decade-old war against phishing and spam emails.
In a blog post published Friday, Google said the Internet-wide efforts against unauthenticated emails, which can be used by spammers and phishers to fake email addresses and deceive users, are working. In fact, the vast majority of non-spam email that Gmail users receive is authenticated with standards designed to fight phishing.

"91.4% of non-spam emails sent to Gmail users come from authenticated senders, which helps Gmail filter billions of impersonating email messages a year from entering our users’ inboxes," Google security researchers Elie Bursztein and Vijay Eranti said in the post.
Since 2004, Internet industry groups and authorities have been pushing for authentication standards, called DomainKey Identified Email and Sender Policy Framework, to be widely enforced. Google said that as much as 74.7% of incoming email on Gmail use both DKIM and SPF, while 14.4% use SPF only and 2.25% use DKIM only. That leaves just 8.6% of emails as non-authenticated.
 But the war isn't over yet. As Google points out in the post, phishers can still target unprotected domains, and even protected ones, if they use weak encryption. That's why Bursztein and and Eranti suggested using at least 1024 bit keys, as "the use of weak cryptographic keys — ones that are 512 bits or less — is one of the major sources of DKIM configuration errors (21%)."

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