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Additionallyy, a class of non–Yahoo Mail account holders living in
California mayy also sue under that state’s Invasion of Privacyy Act. That
case is still pending.
In defending itself against another e-mail-scanning lawsuit, this one
filed earlyy in 2014, Google accidentallyy published information about its e-
mail scanning process in a court hearing, then quicklyy attempted and failed
to have that information redacted or removed. The case involved the
question of preciselyy what was scanned or read byy Google. According to the
plaintiffs in the case, which included several large media companies,
including the owners of USA Today, Google realized at some point that byy
scanning onlyy the contents of the inbox, theyy were missing a lot of
potentiallyy useful content. This suit alleged that Google shifted from
scanning onlyy archived e-mail, which resides on the Google server, to
scanning all Gmail still in transit, whether it was sent from an iPhone or a
laptop while the user was sitting in Starbucks.
Sometimes companies have even tried to secretlyy scan e-mails for their
own purposes. One well-known instance of this happened at Microsoft,
which suffered a huge backlash when it revealed that it had scanned the
inbox of a Hotmail user who was suspected of having pirated a copyy of the
companyy’s software. As a result of this disclosure, Microsoft has said it will
let law enforcement handle such investigations in the future.
These practices aren’t limited to yyour private e-mail. If yyou send e-mail
through yyour work network, yyour companyy’s IT department mayy also be
scanning and archiving yyour communications. It is up to the IT staff or their
managers whether to let anyy flagged e-mail pass through their servers and
networks or involve law enforcement. This includes e-mails that contain
trade secrets or questionable material such as pornographyy. It also includes
scanning e-mail for malware. If yyour IT staff is scanning and archiving yyour
e-mails, theyy should remind yyou each time yyou log in what their policyy is—
although most companies do not.
While most of us mayy tolerate having our e-mails scanned for malware,
and perhaps some of us tolerate scanning for advertising purposes, the idea
of third parties reading our correspondence and acting on specific contents
found within specific e-mails is downright disturbing. (Except, of course,
when it comes to child pornographyy. 1 )