Hofstra Law Review Volume 33 | Issue 4 Article 12 2005 "Don't Be Evil": Gmail's Relevant Text Advertisements Violate Google's Own Motto and Your E-Mail Privacy Rights Jason Isaac Miller Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Miller, Jason Isaac (2005) ""Don't Be Evil": Gmail's Relevant Text Advertisements Violate Google's Own Motto and Your E-Mail Privacy Rights," Hofstra Law Review: Vol. 33: Iss. 4, Article 12. Available at: http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr/vol33/iss4/12 This document is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons at Hofstra Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hofstra Law Review by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons at Hofstra Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Miller: "Don't Be Evil": Gmail's Relevant Text Advertisements Violate Goo NOTE "DON'T BE EVIL": GMAIL'S RELEVANT TEXT ADVERTISEMENTS VIOLATE GOOGLE'S OWN MOTTO AND YOUR E-MAIL PRIVACY RIGHTS I. INTRODUCTION An attorney presses "send" on an e-mail message to a prospective client following an initial consultation. The prospective client has an e- mail account with Google's recently introduced webmail service, Gmail. What the attorney does not know is that before his e-mail reaches its intended audience, Google will have scanned the contents of the message, found within it words and phrases such as "new client," "attorneys at law," "construction litigation," and even the name of the city in which the attorney practices, and placed along side the e-mail, contemporaneously with the client's viewing of it, advertisements for legal services offered by the attorney's competitors.