Did Google Gmail Just Decode/Read a File Attachment in My Inbox?

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I booked a trip to San Francisco to attend a niece's wedding. Departure is next week. Last month, September, I booked from my laptop by going directly on Delta.com, did not book through or even search flights through google.

Last week I went on Delta from my workstation at the office, checked in, selected seats, and created a PDF of the itinerary then emailed it to my gmail acct so I could have it on my phone. The other day I get a notification on my android phone. It says that google maps has downloaded maps for my upcoming trip, to wit: it downloaded San Francisco area maps.

I knew they crawl gmail inboxes to gather marketing data, it's covered in the user agreement. But I didn't think they were robo parsing file attachments. The subj line of the email I left blank as well as the body, just a blank email with the file attachment named "itinerary.pdf"

I'm trying to remember and I can't remember any real time foot prints I'd left connected to google about the trip other than emailing the itinerary from my work email (non-google local hosted) to my gmail acct. I did save the itinerary pdf file to my phone's download storage. I have paid version of malware bytes running on phone and don't think the pdf on my phone storage could be accessed, so I'm pinning it on google crawling my cloud inbox and parsing that pdf file.
 
If the PDF was text then it would be very easy for Gmail to know what it's about. An image PDF would need to go through OCR.

What is surprising is that it hasn't put appointments in your Google calendar.
 
Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
Maybe Delta sold it...
There is no privacy. Period.


True. I did put my gmail email addr as my contact email when booking on Delta.
 
yes. I had similar issue: I was travelling to the airport very early in the morning and missed the exit for the airport. when I asked googlemaps to route me to the airport, it told me that my flight left in 2.5 hours. ??!?!?!? also looking up a google map of our neighborhood - it mapped out not only our house, but also the optician that we use - probably based only on an appointment - I never searched for the optician using GM.
 
I have moved anything financial to an email address protonmail.com.

Check out protonmail.

Very secure, based in Switzerland, and it's all encrypted.

Free. For the basic service.

I still use GMAIL for non financial emails.
 
Even years ago I said I dont trust google. Folks on here swooned about how great they were and had a mantra of do no harm.

Now they're reading emails and stifling free speech and influencing due process and private decisions.

No thanks.
 
Where did your flight confirmation and receipt information go to? Had to go to some email address.
 
Google reads your email attachments. This is no secret or anything that they deny doing.
 
Originally Posted by LoneRanger
I booked a trip to San Francisco


Hope ya'll have your shots up to date, hazmat suits, flashlights, and plenty of hand sanitizer.
 
The paranoia in this thread runs deep af.
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Originally Posted by JHZR2
Even years ago I said I dont trust google. Folks on here swooned about how great they were and had a mantra of do no harm.

Now they're reading emails and stifling free speech and influencing due process and private decisions.

No thanks.


They stopped the "do no harm" a few years back and now harm is not a factor.

We have chosen convenience and allow a spy tool in exchange. Most of us lead insignificant lives so it's not a big deal.
 
I sense this is all AI running in the background.

On my iPhone I don't run Google. It still knows where I am going. We make weekly trips to the store generally on the same day. The iPhone will tell me how long to expect the trip to run and if there are any traffic issues. Same with going to church. It does this without any input from me.

I don't find it intrusive but it is interesting.
 
Originally Posted by PimTac
I sense this is all AI running in the background.


That's all any of this ever is; else data mining would not be profitable.

Originally Posted by Alfred_B
We have chosen convenience and allow a spy tool in exchange.


Precisely. No conspiracy; just a new business model that, in a free country, anyone is free to engage or not engage with.
 
Originally Posted by hallstevenson
Google reads your email attachments. This is no secret or anything that they deny doing.

Yes exactly. I have seen exactly the same thing happen to me as well.

I also have seen where stores will sell your frequent buyer information to other entities such as Facebook. Go to the drug store, buy a product and then see a targeted ad in Facebook within minutes.
 
If you have an android phone, the GPS data is logged by google.

Go to account.google.com (or maybe myaccount.google.com) and log in. Go to 'Data & personalization', then Location history. Click 'manage activity' and you will see everywhere you've been for the last 90 days.

You can clear this data, set when to auto-delete history, etc. You can turn off location tracking, and in prior screens turn off advert stuff, etc.
 
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