No, Google is not your doctor. Google and Gemini are actually violating your privacy. Hidden within your Gmail, Google is reading it all. It operates all the time, unknown to almost all Gmail users. You can turn it off with little effort.
Contrary to popular opinion, Gmail is not free. Users pay a high price: loss of confidentiality, spam, phishing, and risks of malware.
Thank you to Mitch Jackson, Esq. of Jackson and Wilson Attorneys
If you have used the Gemini app, go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini, turn off Keep Activity, and delete your history for all time. Know the limit. Google holds every chat for 72 hours even with that setting off, and any chat a human reviewer already pulled stays on Google’s servers, cut loose from your account, for up to three full years after you hit delete.
If you live in the United States and use Gmail, Google’s AI smart features are on unless you turned them off. Google keeps those features off by default in Europe, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Switzerland, places where data privacy law pushes companies to ask first, and here at home the job of finding the off switch lands squarely on you. That is a choice.
Ten Minutes in Settings
On your computer, open Gmail, click the gear, choose See all settings and uncheck Smart features. Stay on the General tab, click Manage Workspace smart feature settings and switch off both toggles inside. Save.
Now pick up your phone, because Google’s own help page admits some changes made on a computer never reach the mobile app, so open the Gmail app, go to Settings, tap your account, and clear the smart features box there as well. You lose Smart Compose. Your privacy is worth more. Check back every few months, since some users have watched these features turn themselves back on after an update.
Every email you send lands in a second inbox you do not control, and the moment it arrives, the recipient’s settings decide what happens to your words and attachments. If your accountant, your doctor, your best friend, or the stranger who answered your email uses Gmail with smart features left on, Google’s AI processes your message inside their account to summarize it and draft their reply, and Google keeps that copy on its servers for as long as they keep it.
Most of the people you write to never touched theirs, which leaves your medical questions and your settlement numbers sitting inside a data surveillance machine you never agreed to, and no court has ruled that anyone owed you a warning. Treat email like a postcard. Before you hit send, picture your words stored on Google’s servers under someone else’s name, because that is exactly where they go when the recipient uses Gmail.
One Big Problem: Your Privacy Ends in Someone Else’s Inbox
Every email you send lands in a second inbox you do not control, and the moment it arrives, the recipient’s settings decide what happens to your words and attachments. If your accountant, your doctor, your best friend or the stranger who answered your email uses Gmail with smart features left on, Google’s AI processes your message inside their account to summarize it and draft their reply, and Google keeps that copy on its servers for as long as they keep it.
Most of the people you write to never touched theirs, which leaves your medical questions and your settlement numbers sitting inside a data surveillance machine you never agreed to, and no court has ruled that anyone owed you a warning. Treat email like a postcard. Before you hit send, picture your words stored on Google’s servers under someone else’s name, because that is exactly where they go when the recipient uses Gmail.
For anything you would not want a machine reading, move the conversation to Signal or to Proton Mail, where messages between two users stay encrypted from your device to theirs, and no company in the middle reads them. That is why I use Signal with every one of my clients, and it is why you should ask the people you trust most to meet you there and send them this post so they understand what the law has left in their hands. Guy Kawasaki co-wrote an excellent book on how to use the Signal app titled, “Everybody Has Something To Hide.” You can download a free PDF of the book here.
For anything you would not want a machine reading, move the conversation to Signal or to Proton Mail, where messages between two users stay encrypted from your device to theirs, and no company in the middle reads them. That is why I use Signal with every one of my clients, and it is why you should ask the people you trust most to meet you there and send them this post so they understand what the law has left in their hands. Guy Kawasaki co-wrote an excellent book on how to use the Signal app titled “Everybody Has Something To Hide.” You can download a free PDF of the book here.
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