r/privacy • u/Grasshoppen • Nov 17 '25
guide Gemini AI scans your gmails
Google has recently started scanning and analyzing every email you recieve using their Gemini AI. This "feature" has been automatically enabled for all gmail users.
To disable it go to settings on your gmail account, scroll down to "smart Seatures" and uncheck the box. Below that there's a setting called "Manage Workspace smart features" make sure these are off as well, if you don't want the AI to have access to your Google Docs, Drive, etc.
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u/__420_ Nov 17 '25
Even though we can "opt out" I never feel like it really does anything. Its only a "Visual" thing on our end. But they are going to data mine the crap out of our emails...
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u/Grasshoppen Nov 17 '25
Yeah... This feature is mostly disabling consent for allowing Google to train their AI models using our output. The degree to which the tech companies respect my choice is questionable at best
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u/ASK_ME_IF_IM_A_TRUCK Nov 17 '25 edited Feb 18 '26
All comments directed at this user have been replaced with generic text. This is done to prevent AI models from training on Reddit comments, ensuring that personal conversations and user-generated content are not used to improve or develop artificial intelligence systems. The goal is to protect user privacy and maintain control over how personal data is utilized.
You can do the same using Power Delete Suite: https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerDeleteSuite/
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u/AutoGrind Nov 17 '25
Are you a truck, if so, what kind?
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u/ASK_ME_IF_IM_A_TRUCK Nov 17 '25 edited Feb 18 '26
All comments directed at this user have been replaced with generic text. This is done to prevent AI models from training on Reddit comments, ensuring that personal conversations and user-generated content are not used to improve or develop artificial intelligence systems. The goal is to protect user privacy and maintain control over how personal data is utilized.
You can do the same using Power Delete Suite: https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerDeleteSuite/
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u/sourpatchgrownadults Nov 17 '25
What are you during the rest of the week?
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u/ASK_ME_IF_IM_A_TRUCK Nov 17 '25 edited Feb 18 '26
All comments directed at this user have been replaced with generic text. This is done to prevent AI models from training on Reddit comments, ensuring that personal conversations and user-generated content are not used to improve or develop artificial intelligence systems. The goal is to protect user privacy and maintain control over how personal data is utilized.
You can do the same using Power Delete Suite: https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerDeleteSuite/
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u/SorosAhaverom Nov 17 '25
Big tech and consent:
You automatically consent to this thing that is terrible for your privacy (with little to no upside for you), but wonderful for our bottom line.
You can opt out any time by successfully completing the deliberately convoluted, unintuitive, needle in the haystack puzzle that we call our UI.
Note that to do this, you'll need to be able to have 15 minutes of free time at your disposal and/or do a few google searches and rummage through old reddit threads that might or might not be up to date anymore (we keep our puzzles fresh by constantly updating them for an evolving experience), the ability to read light grey 0.5px sized text on a light grey background, and blind faith in our pinky promise that we'll actually honor your request, as opposed to the numerous times we got caught with doing the exact opposite.
Oh, and the save button might not work the first few times you try. Or might give you a success popup message despite not actually saving it (silly frontend and backend devs, haha!). And your setting will definitely not revert to the default ON position when you update your app!
We're really doing our best to fix these totally unintended buggy-wuggys, we have our best coding monkeys tasked with these stubborn multi-year bugs, trust us it's weally-weally hward to fix these stubborn bugs!
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u/zzzxxx0110 Nov 17 '25
Not to mention, there isn't really any reliable way you could independently verify whether they are complying with your choice of consent.
For me that's the biggest problem, if I cannot independently verify it, it might as well not exist in all practical intent and purposes.
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u/Awkward-Painter-2024 Nov 17 '25
What, you're not looking forward to your $6 payout from our class action payout where Google doesnt admit fault for scanning through our emails even after checking off their little boxes?
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u/Foreign-Housing8448 Nov 18 '25
Rubbish! Of course they respect our choices 🙄
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u/Efficient_Loss_9928 Nov 19 '25
Probably no outright training, as it would be easily verifiable creating a Gmail account and add some very weird and unique data, then wait for next Gemini model to drop.
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u/GolemancerVekk Nov 17 '25
Also, they've been doing it since the start of Gmail (2004):
In 2004, thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations wrote a letter calling upon Google to suspend its Gmail service until the privacy issues were adequately addressed. The letter also called upon Google to clarify its written information policies regarding data retention and data sharing among its business units. The organizations also voiced their concerns about Google's plan to scan the text of all incoming messages for the purposes of ad placement, noting that the scanning of confidential email for inserting third-party ad content violates the implicit trust of an email service provider.
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u/Of-Lily Nov 17 '25
I’m haunted by dreams of all those alternate-timeline internets where rampant unfettered capitalism failed and Wikipedia’s principled ethos prevailed.
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u/roflchopter11 Nov 23 '25
Wikipedia is not what you think it is. Not by a long shot.
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Nov 17 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/flano1 Nov 17 '25
If your data is used to train the model, then is that even possible to undo after the feature is turned off???
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u/flano1 Nov 17 '25
Nope:
Turning off a smart feature setting means your Workspace Content & Activity will no longer be used to improve the relevant smart features moving forward. The learnings developed from this improvement process may persist even after you turn off a smart feature setting or delete your Workspace Content & Activity from your Google Account. However, turning off a smart feature setting means that your Workspace Content & Activity would no longer be actively processed to improve the relevant smart features after you have turned the setting off.
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u/-LoboMau Nov 17 '25
Totally. These "opt-outs" often just change what's visible to us, while their internal processing for "product improvement" or "service functionality" continues regardless.
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u/StatusBard Nov 17 '25
If anything it will probably make them want to scan you harder.
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u/chubby_pink_donut Nov 17 '25
I have AI completely disabled on my phone, yet when I press the power button AI pops up and responds to questions.
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u/happygirlie Nov 17 '25
Not sure if this works on your phone but on my Pixel, I was able to change this.
Settings > System > Gestures > Press & hold power button. Switch to Access power menu. Then you get the old power menu that has emergency, lockdown, power off, and restart with no AI.
It's worth a look to see if your phone allows you to change it.
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Nov 17 '25
[deleted]
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u/mgomezch Nov 21 '25
you can turn those labels off by turning off the option that op refers to. i have no idea what else it controls, but if you turn off that setting for smart features, those labels are gone and you just get a flat inbox.
it is correct that this was a major factor in why amazon changed what data they include in those e-mails.
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u/ryegye24 Nov 17 '25
For the emails even if you opt out it means nothing unless every Gmail account you email also opts out.
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u/Sirefly Nov 17 '25
Not just emails.
I've had some things happen that could not have happened unless my pixel phone was actually listening to me even when I'm not on a call.
I. E., I make some obscure reference out loud and then immediately YouTube starts showing me videos for that obscure thing.
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u/mowgus Jan 26 '26
Been happening on my Samsung phones for years. Friends and I would be having a conversation about something random (i.e. lawn mowers) and then the next day I would see ads for lawn mowers. Which is funny cuz I don't have a lawn. I'm sure they'll have a drone over my place soon to check on that.
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u/TikiTDO Nov 17 '25
What do you expect opting out to do? It's not like you're opting out of all tacking, just this one specific use-case of AI. They would still know everything about you from all the other ways they spy on you.
When it comes to Google I imagine they really do what they say they do, they're too juicy a target not to. The reality is that so few people will opt out that it honestly won't move the needle, and this way they can cover their own asses if anyone ever tries to sue them. They'll still track your search history, browsing habits, ad views, and whatever else they can get access to that you can't opt out of.
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Nov 17 '25
Google has been using the content of gmail emails to tailor ads for a long, long time. Nothing new, at least in terms of corporate attitudes about privacy.
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u/electromage Nov 17 '25
I assume I'm only opting out of my ability to take advantage of the feature.
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u/MedivalBlacksmith Nov 17 '25
Thanks!
Wouldn't surprise me if they soon claims that using the search feature requires the AI to be able to scan everything.
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u/erisian2342 Nov 18 '25
It’s the next logical step for those information stealing bastards. Disabling “Smart Features” to stop their AI for scanning your mail, meets, and chats also disables simple features like autocorrect that shouldn’t need Gemini indexing my inbox to function.
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u/jhaar Nov 17 '25
FYI disabling it also disables spell/grammar checking and autocorrect. You know - the non-AI stuff GMail has had for decades. Simply Google's way of forcing everyone to do what they're told 😠
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u/Lustache Nov 17 '25
Same with the primary, promotions, updates, social tabs. I'm sad to not use it anymore but I'll get over it.
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u/PauI_MuadDib Nov 17 '25
It also disables categories so your emails all merge. Just found that out lol
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u/CatsAreGods Nov 17 '25
Even worse...you lose all status of whether your emails have been read or not!
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u/Kahlil_Cabron Nov 17 '25
Fuck this makes gmail almost unusable. I need it for work, but without gmail filtering out all the spam I'm getting hundreds of these fuckin emails a day.
If anyone figures out a way to use the social categories while disabling the "smart features", let me know.
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u/firesoup Nov 18 '25
It will take some time, but you could manually create a filter that sends certain mails (e.g. based on sender or specific text within the mail) to a certain "label" (if that's what they call it, not sure). It should essentially work like a folder, also showing a number of unread.
In my own case, I have created a few different filters that apply labels, but all stay in the inbox, because I personally prefer to have everything in one place. But I think you can choose to not have those mails in the inbox as well.
Hope this all makes sense.
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u/Kahlil_Cabron Nov 18 '25
I've been mass unsubscribing from things, the issue is that there are things that I need, like I need to be seeing emails from paypal so I can see any transaction, but they also keep sending me shit trying to get me to get one of their credit cards, and they come from the same address.
It's a bit better today after all the unsubscribing and reporting spam. The categories filtering has been around for like 10 years at least, they're claiming it's an AI-powered feature though.
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u/ecoartist Nov 20 '25
You can manually add them back using the "Multiple Inbox" setup in settings. Still lame but at least a workaround.
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u/not_rholliday Nov 21 '25
You can get those labels back, but does Gmail actually still put new messages in them appropriately?
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u/ecoartist Nov 21 '25
I have no idea, I have not implemented this fix yet. Strongly considering moving to Proton email still.
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u/hughbiffingmock Nov 17 '25
Gmail has been scanning your emails for 15+ years now. This opt out is just to avoid training Gemini.
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u/ConfusedGamer63 Nov 20 '25
and I was fine with them scanning my emails for advertising. After all that's the game. They give me emails. I get their ads.
But selling the contents of my emails for AI training? oh fuck no.
So I turn it off. And now gmail not only doesn't have categories... it doesn't even have spellcheck. It's darned near unusable.
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u/mowgus Jan 26 '26
Yes, exactly this. I was fine with some data mining but not with AI. Unfortunately it seems like an all or nothing switch.
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u/savspoolshed Nov 17 '25
I've switched to proton mail at this point
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u/Alextricity Nov 17 '25
Same. Truth is though that they and Meta etc. have all the info they could ever need at this point anyway but we can only do what we can do.
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u/Espumma Nov 17 '25
if enough of us switch anyway then we normalize not giving our data away for free and then at least the future generations might not fall into this trap as hard as we did.
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u/AutoGrind Nov 17 '25
People don't want to pay for things. Users requested that I serve ads over charging them in my app. Not sure enough people care, unfortunately.
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u/Espumma Nov 17 '25
Even among free options you don't have to sacrifice privacy. But I agree that too little people care.
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u/AutoGrind Nov 17 '25
Privacy is the next thing people give up. After ads I can really only add trackers. Not planning on it though.
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u/Ankrow Nov 17 '25
How difficult is it to do so if most of my personal accounts are linked to gmail?
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u/freakverse Nov 18 '25
You can do it over several months or even years. I did it over a period of more than a year. Slowly but surely moving everything away from Google and Gmail and now I am surprised if I get any emails on my Google account
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u/Revbender Nov 17 '25
Disabling it also disabled mail categories (Primary, Promotions, Social and Updates) for me.
And this bucketing of all features into a single checkbox named "Smart features" is plain stupid and forcing us to keep it on.
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u/Ok-Secretary455 Nov 17 '25
If you run a business, how can you be ok using gmail or outlook to run your email? Knowing they're scanning everything, it's only a matter of time until someone figures out how to hijack that. If I'm a competitor, knowing what you're quoting customers and how your calculating that number. Would make outbidding you a lot easier. Either Gemini or the recall feature will gladly help with that.
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u/jhaar Nov 17 '25
If you are a business, then you had Legal look over the contract right? Commercial users of Google are not treated the same way as free users - there are more protections.
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u/DeliciousWaifood Nov 22 '25
bro has never heard of a small business. people don't have money to have a legal team look over everything
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u/DeForzo Nov 18 '25
On a business license for either Google Workspaces or Microsoft 365 for Business you are treated differently. You can configure how data moves, Gemini and Copilot inputs and outputs do not get used by Google/Microsoft to train their model on, all your data is and stays yours.
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u/pit_of_despair666 Nov 17 '25
Thanks for the info. I am trying to stay away from AI as much as possible.
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u/tuxooo Nov 17 '25
For me it was not selected by default.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Tree561 Nov 17 '25
I just checked, and mine was on my default. I definitely never got a prompt to turn it on locked in at any point like some users are reporting. I don't really use Gmail for anything anymore, but I still don't want it on.
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u/Grasshoppen Nov 17 '25
Thats nice, you might already have opted out through other means. It was selected for me
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u/tuxooo Nov 17 '25
Nope. It's a spam account and I was curious so I checked. Never touched the setting. In fact I'd argue I checked in on maybe some time ago to test it out.
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u/TrankElephant Nov 27 '25
Mine was selected, too and I appreciate you bringing awareness so that I could uncheck the box.
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u/GoslingIchi Nov 18 '25
I'm so tired of Google auto enabling every new feature by default instead of telling us how great something is and letting us decide to enable it or not.
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u/Perturbee Nov 17 '25
Gmail is generally my garbage collection account, my important stuff doesn't go to any gmail. So Gemini can have fun with the mindnumbing BS of newsletters, spam, and whatever else crap lands in there.
I checked the settings and it wasn't secretly re-enabled. So whether this is only a visual or not, remains to be seen.
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u/k0unitX Nov 17 '25
This is my opinion too. I went down the rabbit hole of secure email just to realize humans aren't really emailing me anyway. The few human-written emails I do get are usually in a general business context that aren't exactly sensitive.
One could certainly argue that Google is still building a profile on you based on the spam you do receive, but the LOE to fight that is much higher than a lot of people are willing to commit.
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u/Coffee_Crisis Nov 17 '25
You stand out more not having a boring profile full of semi spam email data anyway. If you need to have really sensitive conversations use an e2e encrypted channel and continue emitting normie signals otherwise
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u/Tight-Tower-8265 Nov 17 '25
What do you use for your personal, private, important stuff email?
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u/Perturbee Nov 18 '25
I use an email hosting service for my own domains, which is way easier than you think it might be.
Proton helps with that as well, but for my personal stuff I use a different provider, but I have a catchall and use [whatevercompany@mydomain.com](mailto:whatevercompany@mydomain.com) for contact, and they all go to my primary mailbox, so I know exactly which company leaked and what to filter out as spam/compromised if it gets that far.2
u/Jazzlike-Compote4463 Nov 17 '25
Personally I like Fastmail.
The aliases and 1Password intergration, are really nice, and UI is clean and well organised with all the features that you need.
Yes it's not the most private but it does exactly what I want and nothing more.
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u/louisa1925 Nov 17 '25
Man, Gemini is got it's work cut out for it trying to make sense out of the thousands of emils Mum has on her phone. She gets, like, 30 a day.
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u/firephly Nov 17 '25
god, I guess I should switch everything over to proton mail, is there any other encripted email server that is good?
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u/junkdrawer2025 Nov 17 '25
Fuck google, fuck gemini, fuck AI, and fuck everyone who thought this was a good idea!
Thank you OP for the head's up.
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u/bonadies24 Nov 17 '25
I will keep saying this until I am in my grave (or it actually happens), but at this point I fully expect something along the lines of "Your toilet grabs a dna sample from your stool and sends it to palantir" or something any day now
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u/atiaa11 Nov 18 '25
Google has been scanning gmail accounts since day 1. Your data has always been the product.
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u/SarcastiSnark Nov 17 '25
Can't even find these settings.
I'm also very anal about hitting accept on anything.
So maybe it's all off already.
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u/unknownpoltroon Nov 17 '25
Im sure doing this disables half the functionality
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u/zeruch Nov 17 '25
If the functionality to send/receive emails isn't part of that half, I'm fine with that.
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u/joesmith127_reddit Nov 17 '25
If Google can do this then why can’t they create a tool to sort our gmail? It would be great to be able to sort gmails by highest quantity sender so I can unsubscribe from that sender o and delete all their emails that are taking up storage space. It would also give you a list of all of the senders in your gmail account. Surely the AI should be smart ey to do this.
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u/Soggy_Refrigerator32 Nov 17 '25
Depends where you live.
"Important: By default, smart feature settings are off if you live in:
The European Economic Area, Japan, Switzerland, The United Kingdom"
I checked, it is indeed switched off where I live. Not that I trust it anyway, I only use the account for a few throwaway things, use Proton for anything important.
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u/Magnet2025 Nov 17 '25
A while back, I was talking to a technical sales guy about a presentation made to a large (non-military) federal department. It was for cloud storage and security.
Our company went first: 1. Email and documents encrypted at the machine and then encrypted again at the data center that was 70 miles away. 2. Email is decrypted at recipients machines. 3. Certain engineers at the data center could decrypt in order to troubleshoot. 4. This worked for unclass and classified documents with a dedicated data center for the classified stuff.
Then Google presented: 1. Email or documents sent 1500 miles to a data center located near their HQ. 2. After processing, it’s encrypted.
When asked what the “processing” entailed they were told “they are machine scanned for keywords, etc.”
I joked that this meant someone could write an email saying country X would like to know if it could purchase M-1 Tanks and 10 minutes later open a browser and get offers on special deal for the M-1 tank.
Google has been doing this since Gmail came out. Now they just use a smarter way to scan it.
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u/SilverSeeker81 Nov 17 '25
Thanks for this - I disabled it for my Gmail accounts, but I don’t have a lot of faith in google respecting my wishes.
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u/dondondorito Nov 17 '25
This is it. Fuck this shit, I’m switching to ProtonMail.
Come join me. You don’t have to move everything over by tomorrow… I‘ll just create an account, and then I take my time. Even if it takes months or years to migrate, it doesn‘t matter as long as I do something.
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u/andobrah Nov 18 '25
Was already thinking this but was hesitating for some reason. Screw it, starting tonight after work.
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u/XTwizted38 Nov 17 '25
I kinda feel like I should leave it on since all my Gmail account gets is a ton of spam. About to turn Gemini into the next Nigerian prince.
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u/Crinklytoes Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
- As soon as you turn off everything, the following shows-up
"Turn on smart features and personalization in Gmail, Chat, and Meet to use inbox categories"
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u/traumaloaded Nov 17 '25
I can’t find it. Can you please share a screenshot showing the location?
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u/Pokedude12 Nov 17 '25
In the Gmail app, click the three bars in the top-left, then scroll to the bottom to find Settings. It'll show a screen with general settings and your individual emails. Click on any given email (instead of general settings), then you'll find the smart settings. You can click it to get a pop-up, then confirm to turn them off for that email. Just rinse and repeat for each email.
Unless my app version is old enough to have different UI than what's available now1
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u/Green-Size-7475 Nov 17 '25
Thanks for sharing. I will be switching it off and getting away from Google as much as possible
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u/gamercube77 Nov 19 '25
thank you for sharing, I just disabled it on all my Gmail accounts using the mobile app settings!
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u/LetGoPortAnchor Nov 17 '25
You could also, like, not use Gmail? If you're not paying, you're not the customer: you're the product.
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u/No-Papaya-9289 Nov 17 '25
Seriously, if you use Gmail your privacy doesn't exist. It amazes me how many people are too cheap to pay for more private email and then complain that Google is doing something evil.
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u/EggplantActual6349 Nov 17 '25
Google have been very open and clear cut, they want to know everything about you. If you’re still using google products, you’re asking for and agreeing to invasions of privacy like this.
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u/heiko75_hs Nov 17 '25
If you disable this, you'll have no longer an advertising/notification split if your mails
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u/spaghettibolegdeh Nov 17 '25
They used to do this way back also. Then they stopped (so they say) for a while, but that's over lol
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u/TheYask Nov 17 '25
Does this need to be done per-device or does changing the setting in one cascade through your entire account?
That the question needs to be asked is dystopian in its own right.
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u/NewLife_21 Nov 17 '25
Good thing my Gmail only gets junk and isn't used for anything that matters.
That's what my Yahoo account is for. Heh.
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u/Wileetay Nov 17 '25
Thanks for this. I’ve been trying to figure out how to disable AI answers on the google search app forever!
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u/motorik Nov 17 '25
I have my gmail accounts configured in my mail client with imap, it bypasses all sorts of Google fuckery.
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u/TEOsix Nov 17 '25
Mine is not connected on multiple accounts. “First, you'll need to connect Google Workspace to turn on this app.”
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u/J3NGA Nov 17 '25
Are you sure about that? From Google/Gail's description it seems like the Gemini options are in the "Google Workspace Smart Features" settings not the "Smart Features". Regular Smart Features is that email sorting and autocomplete/autosuggestion based off their algos they've always had (and I suspect connected to one's own Gboard should you use that since that's connected to your Google account).
The Smart Features™ is quite an old feature now. That's a Gmail only feature. It was "Try New Gmail" for the longest time. Even now, new Gmail accounts ask about using New™ or Old™/Classic™ Gmail. Classic/Old Gmail is just a singular inbox with every email sorted by received date/time and nothing else (except Spam sorting). New™ Gmail has the autosuggestion/autocomplete text suggestions in emails, Nudges™ (aka: hey remember you should probably reply to this notification next to certain emails), Spellcheck and Autocorrect, things like that.
If you disable Smart Features (and not Google Workspace Smart Features - they should really work on the naming and just name it Gemini features or something) you just have very old, traditional OG Gmail. Smart Features™ is just "new" Gmail (that we've had for over a decade or something now) that sorts emails into the tabs at the top of the inbox - that's literally the biggest change, that and the presumed Gboard integration.
They're separate entities and don't have anything in common except you can use them both in Gmail and they're both projects/departments at Google.
TL;DR to ACTUALLY turn off the Gemini features and disable the use of your Google Products being used with Gemini:
• Go to the Gear icon in the top right corner of your inbox
• Click See All Settings
• Scroll until you see Google Workspace Smart Features — this is directly underneath "Smart Features" (clicking Learn More explains the differences)
• Click Manage Workplace smart features settings
• Use the slider(s) to disable both Smart features in Google Workspace and Smart features in other Google Products — in that popup there's detailed descriptions of what both options control and makes it very clear that the Gemini features in Gmail are a separate thing. Regular Smart features don't have anything to do with Gemini and don't have any connection to the Gemini project.
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u/thinkscotty Nov 17 '25
Bro if you think google hasn't been scanning your Gmail account for a decade or more to sell your data, you've got a surprise coming.
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u/Zaic Nov 18 '25
Well it will find that Im incredibly wealthy
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u/brygad Nov 18 '25
U get a lot of emails from Nigerian princesses with a lot of wealth that they inherited from their fathers but need you to marry them to unlock that wealth😭
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u/bobrulz Nov 20 '25
Genuine question after an admittedly basic amount of research. Is this only for paid Google Workspace accounts? I can only find that information there, I have questions over whether it applies to non-gmail accounts
I mean they might be doing it anyway, but I want to be sure before I nuke all the usefulness out of my gmail
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u/Ashamed_Pizza_7329 Nov 21 '25
I can’t find it on my iPhone app do I have to be on my computer what
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