Re:Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads
by Ajedi32 on Monday June 26, 2017 @10:51AM
(#14637219)
> They certainly won't lose much revenue from fleeing customers
I don't think that's true. Sure, they wouldn't be out of business overnight, but depending on how serious this hypothetical breach of trust is, it'd certainly hurt them a lot.
> Warrants, legislation, and quasi-legal-but-hard-to-ignore orders from governments happen
My threat model does not currently include the NSA or the US government. I don't anticipate that changing in the near future, but if it does then you're right; I'll certainly need to stop using Google services. (And probably all cloud services in general.) Or at least "air gap" them from the portions of data I want to keep secret.
> pretend that Googles security is and always will be perfect [...] that no current or future Google employee will ever become disgruntled
While I consider myself to be more security conscious than the average citizen, I _still_ trust Google's security practices (against both internal and external threats) far more than I trust my own. If my data on Google's services gets compromised, I think it's far more likely that it'll be because someone stole my password and 2FA tokens than because somebody hacked Google.
As with anything, I realize there's certainly a security/usability tradeoff to be made. For the moment though I'm quite confident that the extra utility Google provides is worth the risk, at least for my purposes.
I don't think that's true. Sure, they wouldn't be out of business overnight, but depending on how serious this hypothetical breach of trust is, it'd certainly hurt them a lot.
> Warrants, legislation, and quasi-legal-but-hard-to-ignore orders from governments happen
My threat model does not currently include the NSA or the US government. I don't anticipate that changing in the near future, but if it does then you're right; I'll certainly need to stop using Google services. (And probably all cloud services in general.) Or at least "air gap" them from the portions of data I want to keep secret.
> pretend that Googles security is and always will be perfect [...] that no current or future Google employee will ever become disgruntled
While I consider myself to be more security conscious than the average citizen, I _still_ trust Google's security practices (against both internal and external threats) far more than I trust my own. If my data on Google's services gets compromised, I think it's far more likely that it'll be because someone stole my password and 2FA tokens than because somebody hacked Google.
As with anything, I realize there's certainly a security/usability tradeoff to be made. For the moment though I'm quite confident that the extra utility Google provides is worth the risk, at least for my purposes.