Ads in Gmail and your personal data

So I've decided to start a new email account separate from my company email -- for the primary purpose of developing good electronic communication habits in general. Please remember that an Employee basically has no right to privacy in the workplace, including correspondence on email accounts and communication devices issued by the Employer. An Employer has access to any and all employer-provided and maintained electronic communications of employees at his fingertips. It's really that easy... and completely legal. Though I do hope that one day the Supreme Court would overturn decisions on workplace communications that I think should be private -- and accept that in today's modern society, most communications occur electronically and should be protected and private -- I realize it is an upward battle. Perhaps a battle worth fighting only with counter-surveillance tactics rather than direct confrontation of the beast and its robot spy toys.

Upon feeling liberated from my employer's watchful eyes, I see that Big Brother exists everywhere. Nowhere in cyberspace is private. If you choose to participate in society, you pay the price of constant monitoring.

Ads in Gmail and your personal data

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How Gmail Ads work

Ads that appear next to Gmail messages are similar to the ads that appear next to Google search results and on content pages throughout the web. In Gmail, ads are related to the content of your messages. Our goal is to provide Gmail users with ads that are useful and relevant to their interests.

Ad targeting in Gmail is fully automated, and no humans read your email in order to target advertisements or related information. This type of automated scanning is how many email services, not just Gmail, provide features like spam filtering and spell checking. Ads are selected for relevance and served by Google computers using the same contextual advertising technology that powers Google's AdSense program.

Privacy, Transparency and User Choice

Google does not and will never rent, sell or share information that personally identifies you for marketing purposes without your express permission. No email content or other personally identifiable information will be provided to advertisers. We provide advertisers only aggregated non-personal information such as the number of times one of their ads was clicked.

Privacy is an issue we take very seriously. Only ads classified as Family-Safe are distributed through our content network and to your Gmail inbox. Also, we are careful about the types of content we serve ads against. For example, Google may block certain ads from running next to an email about catastrophic news. In addition, we will not show ads based on sensitive information, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, health, or sensitive financial categories.

If you don't want to see ads in Gmail you have the option of using the HTML interface, or POP or IMAP. We're also committed to data liberation: if you decide to switch to a new email provider, it's easy to set up automatic forwarding for all new messages that arrive in your Gmail account.

If you'd like to know more about how Google handles your information, please check out the Google Privacy Center.

Pink Eye = WMDs

Yes, it is true. I have been slowly assembling an army of cybersoldiers in preparation for robot uprisings and armageddon in general. However, now that I have been demobilized by pink eye, I now believe I should assemble a guerrilla group of bio-terrorist combatants also. I would recruit my two nephews, who transferred the highly contagious virus to me by coughing indiscriminately in my food and my face, all the while staying cute and lovable, disarming me and my better judgment to maintain some distance away from their bio toxic germs. I can't believe I allowed those little fuckers to get me.

Since I am not as cute and lovable as my nephews, my friends are not as disarmed and have maintained their better judgment. Even though I promised not to cough into anyone's food or face, a couple of us made the right decision for me to leave a baby shower early and quarantine myself so I don't spread the infectious disease to the expecting mother and unborn child. In fact, there was another pregnant friend on the scene so I finally left because I couldn't bear the responsibility of something later going terribly wrong. It's not like you can deny spreading pink eye at a party when you're the only one with discharge oozing out of your eye sockets. Thank god I had my sunglasses on. Although no one could tell, I started feeling paranoid. I was reminded of a Bloodhound Gang episode (from 321 Contact) about pink eye. The story was about this school cafeteria employee who had contracted pink eye, yet neglected to wash her hands before she prepared sandwiches, causing a number of teenagers to become ill. She wore sunglasses the whole time to cover her itchy, irritated red eye. But the Bloodhound Gang found her habit of wearing sunglasses indoors, in a dark cafeteria, to be a bit odd. I don't remember exactly how the Bloodhound Gang busted her, but I do remember the moral of the story is to wash your hands frequently... and to never contract pink eye.

Twenty-five years later after watching such an important and informative show, it is clear I have not learned from my childhood lessons. Or perhaps bio-terrorists (ie. children) are far more powerful and deadlier than they were when I was growing up? All I know is that none of my peers growing up ever had pink eye or lice or mono or peanut allergies. But now I have one of the four. OMG. I need to assemble a guerrilla army as soon as possible! In the meantime, I will be an army of one and follow what this guy does.

Public office, public affiliations...

A message to me from the Obama-Biden Administration...

Hello DYY,

Thank you for your interest in joining the Obama-Biden Administration. Within a few days, you will receive an email with a link to the more complete on-line application. Please be patient, as we are trying to respond promptly to the large number of people who are interested in working in the Administration. Thanks.

As for other pubic affiliations, I joined Twitter.Com as a means to infiltrate robot cutlure and study virtual reality. But I have a suspicious feeling, it's just a fancier form of text messaging that is not so fancy after all. Naturally I asked Joe the Webmaster to join, as he agreed to be one of my cyberspace soliders. He may be a member already, which is good. Perhaps this could be a way for us to recruit other cyberspace soliders?

I also hijacked Little Panda's Facebook account and sent all our homies "an egg" which will hatch in a few days what looks like a used contraceptive sponge. It's a weird program and I do not pretend to understand it.

I freaking knew it!!

In addition to serving as a government tracking device AND strengthening robot culture, here's yet another reason why I prefer not to use cell phones if possible.

It's the same reason why I don't eat charred meat.

Last Night's Dream

Since my promotion, my company has made it mandatory for me to have a blackberry. Despite my strong disdain for the cell phone, or any other electronic equipment that may potentially serve as a government tracking device, I have submitted to my employer like the obedient Chinese laborer that I am. In my heart, however, I still resist robot culture.

I have been a blackberry user for 9 months now. I don't use it much for the telephone, I'm not really a telephone type of person anyway. But email. That damn email. I have always been addicted to email, and now having access to email literally in the palm of my hand at all times, any time... oh goy! My once controlled and moderated addiction is now at a new extreme level. Some days I type away on my blackberry with great fondness and joy. Other days I want to throw it out the window. It's like any love/hate addiction, I suppose. Except ordinary people accept this addiction and I blame robot culture.

But I digress. I shall share my stories of resisting robot culture another day. This entry is entitled, Last Night's Dream, after all.

So I had this dream last night that I was on the toliet, struggling with #2. Finally I was able to push out what I thought would be a very impressive piece of turd to learn that I pooped out my blackberry!

Now I have already interpreted this dream in many ways. But I thought it would be best to ask the experts on Dreammoods.com.

I searched its dream dictionary for "cell phone" --

To see or use a cell phone in your dream, indicates that you are being receptive to new information.

Then I searched "feces" --

To see or come in contact with feces, signifies aspects of yourself that are dirty and negative and which you believe to be undesirable and repulsive. According to Freud, feces is related to possession, pride, shame, money/financial matters, or aggressive acts.

This must mean that I find access to information via crackberry undesirable and repulsive.

Wow. My dream is totally a cautionary tale, a warning to resist robot uprisings before it becomes part of your everyday shit!