Do you know how to turn _off_ (or "pause" in Google parlance) this seemingly long-term and apparently permanent receipt scanning of your Google email?
If you're not aware of what's going on, I post this detailed example so that you can be advised that Google apparently keeps a _separate_ log of all digital receipts emailed to your GMail account, which is _separate_ from the normal privacy stuff that you can typically "pause" for privacy.
AFAIK, this is where your normal privacy stuff is set for Gmail accounts:
This is the "special" scanning done of _all_ your tools/parts receipts:
As far as I can tell, there's no way to turn this scanning off, where, together, we can ascertain exactly _what_ Google considers the definition of a "receipt", where the examples I found in _my_ email appear to include _free_ stuff, and warranty registration cards, etc.
Since Usenet is a potluck picnic where adults strive to bring something of value to the picnic table, I ask that you look at what is scanned in _your_ receipt cache, and report back to us so as to edify us of _other_ types of "receipts" you find - where I will do my part by showing below the types of things Google considers a "receipt" for this scanning & logging purpose.
Also, if you have special skills in the knowledge of _where_ we can permanently turn this "receipt" scanning off, that would be helpful, since, AFAICT, the best you can do, as shown here for an electronics purchase, as far as I can tell at this point, is to completely delete the original email:
One problem is that this scanning includes even _free_ electronics, tools, and parts... for example, this femtocell cellular tower that my carrier lent to me, at no cost, which is attached to my router to project as its own micro tower (and my cellular repeater, which is another unit that the carrier lent me, for free, since I'm thousands of feet on the top of a mountain overlooking Silicon Valley, where my home is large & therefore requires multiple cellular mini towers)
Many of us are forced to purchase specialty electronics tools online, such as is shown in this receipt for BMW factory & dealer diagnostic tools from China, which, by the way, you can't obtain _except_ online, because this is the both modified (i.e., hacked) versions of BMW coding software, and the exact _same_ software that both the factory in Germany and the local dealers use, including the ability to program the score of ECUs in the bimmer (e.g.,EDIABAS, INPA, NCSExpert, NCS Dummies, EasyDIS, DIS/GT1 & Progman):
Since I do all my own mechanical work, I learned to comprehend tire specs so that I can purchase, online, the best tires possible, where I then have them ship those tires to my home so that I can match mount and balance them at my own convenience in my own garage, knowing the job is done perfectly (you don't even want to know how many times tire shops cut corners in the interest of "their" time and expense, when they are mounting & balancing your tires!)
Now, even Google knows that I save tons of money buying automotive maintenance items online, where, for example, I got 6 better-than-OEM spec tires for less than $100 each, match mounted, balanced, & installed.
Google knows you've eliminated the middleman, for example, where I found _errors_ in the printed specs for the government-mandated material, manufacturer, date, and cold/hot friction codes stamped on brake pads & shoes, such that the manufacturer of these friction materials appreciated talking to me enough to ask the warehouse to give me a discount on order for brake pads and shoes, which now Google keeps track of:
Outside of specialty electronics, tools, and automotive parts direct from the manufacturer that you can only get on the net, here's a receipt for an Amazon gift order from years ago, whom I'm sure many people buy from:
Here's a receipt for clothing accessories bought from Nordstrom's:
There's even a receipt containing all my details when I filled out a tire-warranty registration card online with tire serial numbers:
Unfortunately, I don't know yet how _turning off_ scanning is possible. o Do you?
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NOTE: Uesnet is a potluck picnic, where everyone proves their value added,
where jokes about deleting Google aren't helpful - but where advice for
turning this scanning off would take intelligence which would, therefore,
be helpful to share with everyone to improve our combined capabilities.
You and I go way back, where you help us solve problems that most people can't even fathom the solution to, since the solution requires brains that you have, but which most others who post don't have.
Let's _solve_ this problem the best way we can o By understanding the problem set - and then the solution that works.
For example, we've already solved, rather easily it turns out, all Google spying on the Android newsgroup, where we can eliminate google without even having to resort to being root.
We solved that problem simply by working together and not giving up when the electronic solution became difficult.
WE can do that for this problem too, IMHO. o Starting with defining the problem set.
We _need_ email, right? o So we have to have an email account, right?
And, if we want stuff such as that BMW factory software so that we can diagnose, fix, and re-program the score of ECUs in a typical bimmer, we have to get that software online, right (because BMW doesn't sell it).
Also, if we buy tires online to get the best tire at the best price, we end up getting the registration receipt online also. Likewise, if we get free electronics like my femtocell & repeaters from my carrier, _they_ send those confirmation emails online - whether I like it or not.
*Who _knew_ that these things are _all_ saved _separately_ by Google?*
That is, they're NOT saved in the "normal" place to control such things:
Hence, there are multiple facets of this thread, intended to solve the stated problem set, as always, with the combined help of the tribe:
The main questions asked in the discovery phase are:
What do you find in your account that Google considers a receipt?
Is there any other way to "pause" this other than to delete the email?
Once we answer those questions, more detailed questions can be solved:
What's the best alternative to Gmail known today?
Is there an automated way to locally intercept & reattach receipts
If you (or anyone else) knows of the BEST alternative email to Gmail, let's discuss that - because it's a potential viable solution to the problem set.
If there's a clever electronic way to intercept our own emails locally, recognizing what Google considers a "receipt" (bearing in mind Google's interpretation clearly includes free stuff & registration cards)?
For example, maybe we can solve the problem by: o Figuring out what Google triggers as a "receipt" o Set our _own_ triggers (e.g., with procmail) to recognize the receipt o Collect, and locally re-scan that receipt & send as an attachment etc.
There is a problem - and there is a solution. o If we say "don't use Gmail" then we need an alternative mail service.
What's the most viable alternative email service that people know of?
If you aren't paying for a service, you aren't the customer. If you aren't the customer, you are likely the product.
Giving google this information is how you pay for your mail service. If you do not like giving this information up, purchase your mail service elsewhere or don't send that information by email. Google sells that information, which is how they can afford to provide email to you for free.
There are plenty of places that will sell you IMAPS service that is reasonably private and reasonably well-maintained. I am not suggesting you abandon google altogether, but I am certainly suggesting that if you care about keeping your email information private that you should not be using gmail.
--scott
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"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Agreed on the fact there's no need to "sell your soul" to Google.
I saw the purposefully helpful suggestion from rbowman of Proton, which I've tested in the past, but I don't remember why I didn't keep it so I'll try anew as if there was a better solution, I'd seek it out - although - sometimes the "fancy" tools are no better in the end than the tried-and-true basic boring tools.
LATER EDIT: I also saw your purposefully helpful suggestions of alternative Email services other than Gmail below! (Thanks - I'll test them out.)
No disagreement here on Chrome.
Chrome is banned from my systems, where there are _plenty_ of privacy based Chromium-based browsers, e.g., Epic or Opera on Windows, both of which claim to be a free VPN but which are both really encrypted web-based proxies. (And there's Brave, which is a tor-by-tab enabled browser.)
And non-Chromium-based privacy browsers too (e.g., TBB).
Be careful here, as most people, IMHO, who use iOS, are highly influenced by bullshit marketing, as the sad fact is and always was that iOS has very little of the privacy that Android has, where most people only know the cherry-picked examples that some marketing organization feeds them; but not the full factual details about privacy.
For example, it's _easy_ to remove almost all Google privacy intrusions on Android while it's impossible to have the same kind of privacy on iOS.
We have a loooooooong very detailed discussion of this easily proven fact on the smartphone ngs, so I won't belabor the issue here other than to say anyone who feels iOS is somehow (magically?) more private than Android, doesn't know either system to _any_ level of comprehension.
All they know is marketing bullshit.
See factual details here: o What is the factual truth about PRIVACY differences or similarities between the Android & iOS mobile phone ecosystems?
This is true, IMHO, that Google sees everything you let them see.
Just like I stated the fact is that you can easily almost completely eliminate Google from Android without _any_ loss of functionality, we _should_ be able to eliminate this specific offshoot separate privacy hive of our stored receipts. o Is there any free FUNCTIONALITY that you need to do on Android, that you can't do WITHOUT a Google Account?
What we need is a similar solution of eliminating this receipt hive.
Obviously, it's Google's fault for not putting this receipt hive along with the other privacy hives which are able to be "paused".
Clearly, one short-term workaround, staying within the Gmail ecosystem, is to print the emailed receipt to a format which Google doesn't scan (e.g., PDF or JPEG), and then reattach that receipt to an email (if you wish to store it in your Google account).
The main problem with the short-term solutions, such as printing to PDF and saving the PDF'd receipt in a folder on your system, is that _new_ receipts will _still_ get archived - since I couldn't find a way to "pause" this receipt hive.
One potential permanent solution might be a local filter, such as a procmail server for example, which automatically re-creates a local email that is in an image format, and hence less likely to be scanned by Google.
Or, as rbowman suggested, a better freeware email solution, perhaps o
formatting link
Which claims: o Open source o Works with any MUA o Swiss privacy laws o End-to-end encryption o No personal information or even IP addresses logged
I will set this up and test and write back the results on the related platform ngs, so that everyone benefits from the efforts of others bringing value to the Usenet potluck picnic.
Did you _really_ know that Google keeps the receipts _separately?_ o And, did you know it's not part of the _normal_ privacy stuff?
Really? o I find that hard to believe - but it _could_ be true. (I'm not going to belabor whether you knew or not.)
Nonetheless, even if you did know about it, there's no mention from you in the past that you noted of how to solve the problem - so - it doesn't help to know about it - but I do see that you kindly provided potential solutions below - which is great added value to the Usenet picnic to share.
NOTE: Proton Mail, suggested by rbowman, seems like a decent choice, where I see you provided alternatives, which I will test out.
I think you _still_ need IP address protection if you're setting up sendmail at home, don't you?
I guess you could automate every sendmail batch request to include a connection to VPN - which should work. And, there's DDNS if you don't have a static IP address, for example.
If folks have working scripts, that's what we should be discussing then, as it's not rocket science to set up a sendmail server - but - the IP address protection is the problem.
Hehhehheh... my ISP? o My situation is not like most since I get my Internet via an antenna.
Most people though don't live on a mountaintop, so they probably have a cable (and pipes) which feed their homes, so for _them_, that's a potentially viable solution.
Ah! Now that's value to be brought to the potluck picnic to share!
These are all nice starting suggestions for _replacement_ email service: o free, no private information, no IP logs o mail & calendar, (business solution) o seems to be an ISP??? o OSS, encryption, all platforms, free, ad free o 10GB storage, free?, no personal information o free, requires personal information o free, requires personal information,
Always keeping to the spirit of a general purpose solution, these appear upon the first pass to be free and they appear, on just the first skim of the main web page, to not log your IP address or ask (or require) personal information during the sign-up process: o free, no private information, no IP logs o free, no private information, no IP logs o free?, no private info, IP logs?
Thanks for the payware solutions, where some above seemed to be payware also (at least upon initial inspection), but where payware instantly relegates the solution to a non-general solution - where the cost of freeware is in the immense testing involved - while the prelimary to payware is the freeware.
Once we know what the freeware is capable of, then and only then do we have the information necessary to evaluate our payware needs.
That's the classic two-step process to using payware, where, almost always, the freeware does not only what the payware does, but often _more_ than the payware does - but each functionality situation is different.
Hi Clare, I cut my teeth on computers during the days of the punched card and IBM JCL, where the IBM 1130 and PDP 11 was something I used in college, and then I worked on a variety of DEC and Masscomp boxes until Sun took over (and died), so, um, yeah, I know that stuff (I wrote hundreds of procmail filters, for example, in the days when we actually _complained_ to the server admin if we received a spam, and we used our actual email addresses in tin or rn).
Um... yes. MUA is the old term, as I'm sure you're aware of (also MTA). [Then there's LDA and MDA, but let's not go into all these TLAs.] o Plain old "mailx" was what I used on Linux for my "client" o Then Windows & the Mac had Eudora for the longest time as the "client" Well before Google existed.
In the olden days, with our ISPs, we had to get these settings: o We started with pop3 server settings & smtp server credentials o Then we moved to imap4 (which didn't download the mail locally) o And, until AT&T joined up with Cuomo, we had the ISP's nntp server:port
My ISP is a WISP with about 50 customers locally. o We do our own antenna installs and self-help for the neighbors
Mostly we use powerful WiFi radios, of which I have a half dozen scattered about - here's a shot I took just now of just one corner of the basement of my house, for example [In that photo is also the cellular repeater, a wired repeater, and a few powerful 2.4GHz & 5GHz transceivers, not all of which are in current use).
While that's just a half dozen radios, I have at least a dozen of them scattered about as access points and to connect with the WISP & to neighbors a few miles away, as we pass our Internet back and forth over Fresnel zones and up the steep mountainside to paint the deep canyons below.
All we get from the ISP is the Internet - where that's all we need.
I'm not sure what you mean by "mail2web" though, as there seem to be a few outfits using that name, e.g., o o
And, for Horde, vs Roundcute vs SquirrelMail, we can refer to this review: o o o o Where: o Horde webmail - full suite of feaures o Roundcube webmail - most populare - but with limited features o Squirrelmail webmail - limited functionality but easy to use (died 4/2018) And where all apparently require a "cpanel account". o
But a web browser is, by most accounts, an horrific way to obtain email, where a dedicated MUA is the way to go, IMHO - but that's a different question altogether.
In summary, you've brought value to share at the Potluck Picnic that is Usenet, where the first task following up on your purposefully helpful post is to explore the viable freeware mail services which can _replace_ google email functionality as a global and general solution for everyone on all platforms.
Thanks for bringing something of value to the Usenet potluck picnic. There's plenty of general use for users to followup with more details based on their adding of their valuable experience to the Usenet potluck!
Thanks to purposefully helpful suggestions by rbowman & Clare Snyder in this thread, we have five potential replacement free mail services to consider.
Moving the on-topic potluck forward, I add value by reporting that I tested for the team the following five mail services, all of which seem to be potentially viable as Gmail replacements; however, my assessment is based only on _preliminary_ tests over the past couple of days only (where time will tell whether these five mail services are viable Google alternatives). o GMX o Proton Mail o Tutanota o Yandex o Zoho
GMX: o Unknown storage limit o Required Mr or Ms gender selection o Required a first & last name o Required a country, and, for the USA, a state o Required a DOB o Password must be at least 8 characters o Required a password-recovery selection (SMS or email) o Required a phone number for SMS verification (but didn't use it???) o Required captcha (easy fire-hydrant single-pass stuff) o Doesn't inform you the username is valid until late in the game
Proton: o 500MB storage & 150 messages per day limit o Allows choice of domain (protonmail.com, protonmail.ch) o Recovery email is optional o Doesn't require gender or name or DOB or location or phone, etc. o Informs you in real time whether the username is taken or available o Password must be at least 6 characters o Choice of verification by captcha, email, sms, or donation o Captcha is easy one-pass fire-hydrant stuff o Asks to "show notifications" (which you can block or allow)
Tutanota: o 1 GB limit o Doesn't require gender or name or DOB or location or phone, etc. o Requires a strong password of undetermined characters (at least 8) o Tells you the password cannot be reset (so choose wisely, I guess) o Informs you in real time whether the username is taken or available o Asks you to write down 64 hex character "recovery code"
Yandex: o Unknown storage limit o Requires only first name & surname o Informs you in real time whether the username is taken or available o Requires a strong password of undetermined characters (at least 8) o Asks for telephone number but lets you skip in favor of security question o Allows you to write your own custom security question & custom answer o Requires a simple Captcha-like typing of screenshot words
Zoho o 5GB storage limit o Requires only first name & last name o Username must be more than 6 characters o Password literally requires 8 letters even if it's much longer than that o Requires mobile phone number to send SMS verification code o Accepts free second-line mobile phone software SMS numbers though o Asks to enable 2FA but you can skip it "for now" o Save the numeric "user id" which shows up after you create the account
If you have data to share to improve the quick summary above, or, if you know of _other_ free gmail service replacements, please let us know as Usenet is a potluck where everyone is expected to bring something of value to share.
Since I only tested the five suggested mail services using the web, it's time to choose a cross platform free MUA out of this list of common ones. o Blue Mail (iOS) o Claws Mail (Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS) o eMClient (Windows, Mac) o Evolution (Linux) o Geary (Linux) o Hiri (Windows, Mac, Linux) o Inky (Windows, Mac, Android) o K-9 Mail (Android) o Mailbird (Windows) o Mailspring (fork of Nylas Mail) o myMail (iOS) o Nylas Mail (Windows, IOS, Linux, Mac) o Outlook (Windows) o Pegasus o Spark (Android) o Spike (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS) o Thunderbird (Windows, Mac, Linux) o Windows Live Mail (Windows) o Zimbra (Windows, Mac, Linux) etc.
Choosing Clawmail (since it's on all five common consumer platforms), the next step is to look up the SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 server settings for each of the five suggested mail services.
Here is a first pass at the POP3, IMAP4, & SMTP server & port settings. o o
GMX: o POP3: pop.gmx.com:995 (SSL or encryption)(alternative: 110) TLS/SSL required: yes for port 995, no for port 110 o IMAP4: imap.gmx.com:993 (SSL/TLS)(alternative: 143) TLS/SSL required: yes for port 993, no for port 143 o SMTP: mail.gmx.com:587/465 (STARTTLS, TLS or encryption) smtp.gmx.com:587 TLS/SSL required: no o Username: snipped-for-privacy@gmx.com o Password: fubar
Proton: o POP3: web only? o IMAP4: web only? o SMTP: web only? o Username: snipped-for-privacy@protonmail.com o Password: fubar
Tutanota: o POP3: web only? o IMAP4: web only? o SMTP: web only? o Username: snipped-for-privacy@tutanota.com o Password: fubar
Yandex: o POP3: pop.yandex.com:995/SSL o IMAP4: imap.yandex.com:993/SSL o SMTP: smtp.yandex.com:465/SSL 587/SSL o Username: snipped-for-privacy@yandex.com o Password: fubar
Zoho: o POP3: pop.zoho.eu:995/SSL o IMAP4: imap.zoho.eu:993 SSL o SMTP: smtp.zoho.eu:587/TLS 465/SSL o Username: snipped-for-privacy@zoho.com o Password: fubar
Here is where the information above came from in this first pass.
GMX: o o o o o o o
Proton: o o No POP3 support o o o Proton Bridge only for payware users o
Tutanota: Apparently does not support IMAP or POP3 o o o
Russian collusion! The Russians are coming! Oddly I'm at the point where I trust the Russians more than our homegrown Stasi. I've been using Kaspersky on my Windows boxes for a long time. If it's stealing my data at least it doesn't let other people grab it.
The Russian guy who wrote the EBookDroid app provides excellent customer service for an absolute pittance. We asked him how we could pay more (apparently paypal doesn't work in Russia), but he said just buy the 'pro' app. He also speaks (or at least writes) excellent English, such that I wonder if he's just pretending to be Russian.
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Cheers, Bev
"Everyone ought to stop and smell crayons once in a while."
-- DA
Imagine if after discovering the Japanese government was responsible for Pearl Harbor instead of lighting them up the US government signed a crude oil purchase agreement and sold them our latest aircraft
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