Imma leave it.
All I get is fucking spam. Let them train on that shit and make Gemini even shittier than it already is. I swear, AI sucks major shit but Google's especially takes the cake for how shitty it is compared to all the others.
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2025
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I left it last year for tutamail.
Its not fancy. But why the hell do I want fancy email?
I went yahoo for 'that mail'.
by 'that mail', nothing I use professionally, but need for entertainment, picky store accounts and food.
Steam, for instance thinks my domain email address is a temp email and won't let me use it, they don't think the same of yahoo.
I just opted out of Gmail
I logged into my GMail account for the first time in years due to this (I normally just use it as an IMAP server.) The "smart features" were already turned off.
It would certainly be nice if we could have sources of information about these kinds of privacy issues that didn't lie their asses off constantly to create hysteria, but I guess that's too much to ask for.
Glad I have uBlock installed so at least this site didn't get any ad revenue from me.
It was already on for me I had to disable it. I appreciate the warning.
Not to be a downer, but I'm confident Google scans every email with AI regardless.
People should still opt out, but we know Gmail itself is entirely compromised.
Seems like you can’t disable from the web? I’ve never used a Gmail app, always used via imap. Fucking hate having to download an app to turn this off. Not my primary email address, but it is my secondary. Should change that…
On browser view you can't, but I switched to desktop view and it came up. The settings page on browser is fucking embarrassing.
That site is cancer on mobile. Can anyone TLDR this article for me?
Has the steps and is relatively short
It would've been nice if malwarebytes had actually fact checked those steps to turn off smart features for the app on mobile. Because as they are right now, it only works on the desktop version of gmail.com despite what they claim in the steps themselves.
Here's how to turn it off on iOS:
- Open the gmail app
- Tap on the hamburger menu (top left) and scroll all the way down and tap on "Settings"
- Go to "Data privacy" option in the settings menu (they omitted this step on Malwarebytes)
- Turn off "Smart features"
i closed reader view and scrolled just to see and wow the POPUPS and 50% of the page length being ads
WHAT
who uses the internet like this and finds it acceptable?!
Google extended their Smart features with AI. It can be disabled in the settings, presumably if you haven't already.
I visited Gmail earlier today, and it gave me onboarding with information and the choice of enabling or not. I'm in the EU, dunno if that makes a difference.
I for one won't opt out because the only thing I get is spam and work shit. Go ahead train the AI off spam. The vast majority of emails are spam.
Yeah my gmail is mostly for spam. I dont get any real emails to it.
You have been automatically OPTED IN to allow Gmail to access all your private messages & attachments to train AI models.
"Feature"
So what you’re saying is that all of Epsteins emails are going to be used to train Gemini? Interesting…..
I already disabled all that "smart" crap years ago.
good thing my gmail is full of spammy bullshit.
I'm not seeing where any of this gives Google permission to train AI using your data. As far as I can see it's all about using AI to manage your data, which is a completely different thing. The word "training" appears to originate in Dave Jones' tweet, not in any of the Google pages being quoted. Is there any confirmation that this is actually happening, and not just a social media panic?
i probably agreed to 'smart' something, long ago for spellcheck and others. they've expanded those options a lot. i no longer need google spellcheck. firefox since the chrome went downhill
The only option is smart features, on or off. That requires Google to read the email to categorize them and do a lot of basic stuff. It doesn't let you narrowly have more privacy on specific features. It's all or nothing, and if you get a lot of emails then it's hard to turn it off if you already use categories. Google always does all or nothing because they know people need some of it, same with location. It has to be precise location tracking to use things, you can't just do rough location.
Yes, but the point is that granting Google permission to manage your data by AI is a very different thing from training the AI on your data. You can do all the things you describe without also having the AI train on the data, indeed it's a hard bit of extra work to train the AI on the data as well.
If the setting isn't specifically saying that it's to let them train AI on your data then I'm inclined to believe that's not what it's for. They're very different processes, both technically and legally. I think there's just some click-baiting going on here with the scary "they're training on your data!" Accusation, it seems to be baseless.
So you think that they're not using your data simply because they're not telling you that they are? Don't be naive. Since when are these companies asking for permission? I'm not even confident opting out does anything. At this point, your safest bet is to not use their services.
So they are using AI but not in a capacity that would make it learn? Doubt
Yes, exactly. Training an AI is a completely different process from prompting it, it takes orders of magnitude more work and can't be done on a model that's currently in use.
I would opt out just in case. I remember using Adobe Acrobat at work and noticed they read every single PDF and generate a few comments about it even when you never asked them to. Meaning they‘re scanning through potentially confidential data. I have no doubts Google will do the same sooner or later.
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Be aware that disabling this also disables categories in your email. It really sucks that they tied those together. But I need to get away from gmail anyway...
Good news, I already had that disabled
Does anyone have a good in depth guide on how to de-google? My ultimate goal is to not use Google at all and use Graphene OS on my Pixel
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR_ghQEN2SgB5ZpiIIzlJvtXhXHfEf1M7
TheHatedOne on YT has some good resources
You can also find degoogle lists with alternatives for each app, e.g. here: https://git.tycrek.com/archive/degoogle
My advice to you is to take one step at a time, explore at your own pace. It's easy to get overwhelmed, but IMO each step is beneficial on its own. E.g. instead of moving to Proton.me in one night (or any other email provider), first start by forwarding the emails and see if you're ok with the product
There's no guide since everyone's use case is different, and 100% is only obtainable if you avoid all tech. GrapheneOS or buy an iPhone are the best options. I went the grapheneos route, but I still use google play services as I found its the safest way to still get apps for now, and the disconnect from google is still much more than using stock android. I moved email to proton, maps I use OsmAnd.
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On the web UI they sneakily slide in the Gemini icon exactly where the settings icon is after about 2 seconds of loading the page which caught me out for the first account I was updating. Really annoying.
I'm honestly kinda surprised that Google is apparently not in fact doing this already and (according to the comments here) continues to not do so.
They don’t give a shit about what the law or terms say. They’ll just do whatever and if caught pay pennies on the dollar in fines.
We’ve seen them do this and win time and time again with the google library project and other actions. All the AI companies are training on any and all data they have access to, laws be damned. It’s the MO for any new venture capital / tech project with unlimited profits if someone gets there first.
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