GMAIL

GIVE ME SPACE, LOTS OF SPACE

The Annoyance:

I use Yahoo! Mail, and I'm constantly running out of storage spacethe free 250 MB isn't enough. I get the feeling they're "encouraging" me to upgrade to the Plus service, for $20 per year. (Granted, that does buy you 2 GB of space.) Is there a better (and cheaper) alternative?

The Fix:

Get 4 times the space with Google's free email service, called Gmail (Figure 1-18). You get an astounding 1 GB of free storage, so it'll be a long, long time before you have to delete a piece of email. Sign up at http://gmail.google.com.

The service offers a lot of extras besides a ton of storage space. For example, you can search through your mail using Google's search technology, so even though you might have a lot of mail, finding what you want is easy. Also, there's a nice set of tools for creating folders (which Google calls "labels") and for creating rules for automatically handling mail (for example, routing messages to the appropriate folders based on the sender or on words in the text).

Figure 1-18. You can import your entire folder structure from your old copy of Outlook Express, or only the folders you select.

WHY WON'T GMAIL RECEIVE NEWSLETTERS?

The Annoyance:

I've signed up for half a dozen email newsletters using my Gmail account, but I haven't received a single one yet. What's with Gmailis it losing more mail than the U.S. Postal Service?

The Fix:

The culprit is Gmail's spam filter, which can be a bit aggressive when it comes to newsletters (especially any initial messages that require you click internal links to confirm your free subscription). Click the Spam link in your Gmail account; you'll probably see that Gmail has filtered out all your newsletters as spam. To let future newsletters through, scroll to the bottom of each newsletter, and click the Not Spam button. Each one you marked will be moved to your inbox, and future newsletters should now get through to you.

DOES GMAIL INVADE YOUR PRIVACY?

Almost as soon as Gmail was launched, it caused an outcry among some privacy advocates. That's because Gmail delivers ads along with the mail, based on the contents of your incoming messages. So, in theory, a friend could send you a message about a new car he just bought, and Gmail could serve up ads for that car, for other cars, for car-repair services, and so on.

No human at Google actually examines the email; computers examine the incoming messages on the fly and deliver ads based on their content. The technology is similar to the one used by Google to serve up ads based on your searches.

However, privacy advocates contend that Google's practice still violates your privacy. In April 2004, 31 privacy and civil liberty groups, including the Consumer Federation of America, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the National Consumers League, sent a public letter to Google, asking that the Gmail service be suspended until privacy issues are addressed. The groups claim that "The scanning of confidential email violates the implicit trust of an email service provider. Further, the unlimited period for data retention poses unnecessary risks of misuse...the Gmail system sets potentially dangerous precedents and establishes reduced expectations of privacy in email communications." Their biggest fear is that Google might keep copies of your mail, and those copies could be misused in some way.

Google and its defenders say that all ISPs examine mail to determine whether it's spam. According to Google's page about Gmail privacy at http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/more.html, "All email services scan your email. They do this routinely to provide such popular features as spam filtering, virus detection, search, spell checking, forwarding, auto-responding, flagging urgent messages, converting incoming email into cell phone text messages, automatic saving and sorting into folders, converting text URLs to clickable links, and reading messages to the blind." The page also notes that all ISPs back up mail, so Google's policy on retaining mail messages is similar to that of other ISPs. In this instance, an invasion of privacy is in the eye of the beholder.

WHERE'S MY ARCHIVED GMAIL?

The Annoyance:

I regularly go through my Gmail account and archive mail that I may want to re-read at some later point, but that I don't want cluttering up my inbox. But archiving the mail makes it vanish! Where's it gone?

The Fix:

Google could use some help with the English language, because unlike in other email programs, "archiving" mail in Gmail just makes it invisible. Click the All Mail linkyou'll find the archived mail there, mixed in with all your other mail.