Google’s Gmail service is, without doubt, the most used free email platform on the planet, with almost 2 billion daily users. Let that sink in for a moment. Now you should appreciate why it’s also a prime target for hackers, scammers and other threats. Many of these, sadly but inevitably, are driven by AI tools. Which is why there has been concern over headlines this week that Google is letting its Gemini Deep Research tool read Gmail messages, as well as data from Docs, Drive and Chat. However, there’s a major privacy and security caveat: you have to give it permission first.
Even if I need to give permission first, I won’t trust it.
Fastmail is probably the best alternative, feature wise at least. They’ve got their own draconian mail access laws in Australia, so from a five eyes point of view it’s not a great deal different. No AI reading or training on your mail at least.