Gmail Related Links Reveal More Than Some May Like
Steve Rubel posts on how the “Related Pages” links Gmail puts below its ads can contain more information than the sender might want. For example, in an email Steve got from Apple advertising its new Intel Macs, the links were to news stories explaining how Apple gave $200 price drops to its G5 iMacs.
Imagine if you got an email from a company that was in the news for doing something horrible?
From: recruiter@widgetcorp.com
Subject: job?
Hey, dude, we got a great job for you! Come and get it!
——————————————————-
Related Pages
Widget Corp Accused Of Sex Crimes
CNN.com - February 2, 2006
The FBI is accusing Widget Corp of kidnapping
young women and very cruelly…
Yeah, that could go very poorly. For the end user, Google’s doing a great job helping you out, letting you know stuff that might be important about whatever your email is in regards to. But if your company is doing bad in the news, you might want to leave the company name out of emails to Gmail users until the situation blows over.
It certainly makes it more worth it to look at the ads.
