This is why I love gmail

Tracking Numbers in Gmail

I got a shipment notification about some ebay order today and my gmail was smart enough to recognize the UPS tracking number, and provide a clickable link to UPS tracking website on the sidebar. Awesome! I don't know about you, but little things like that make me happy :P

Of course this also means that Google now knows what I buy on ebay, where I live and when will my order be shipped. Somewhere out there, Google is building a really detailed profile of me. Over several years they can really create a neat little index representing my preferences, interests, hell - even political views. After all this very blog is hosted on a Google owned servers :P It's scary to think what would happen if they would subpoena google for information on you.

It's scary to think about this. But then again, unless you run your own host, and send everything encrypted with pgp you can't have any expectations about privacy. At least google is indexing info about you openly, and promises not to misuse it. This is actually more than can be said about our government at the moment :P

When I really want privacy I use pgp. For normal day to day stuff, gmail is just convenient. Especially with a nifty plugin for Firefox that let's me know when my mail is ready :)

Tags: gmail, google, email, privacy, rights, email privacy, gmail privacy, database, tracking numbers, gmail and tracking numbers, gmail cool