Can 3rd-party developers snoop into Gmail?

Washington, July 3: Serious security and privacy questions are being raised after a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report claimed that Google is allowing third-party app developers to scan Gmail accounts.

Before 2017, there was hue and cry over Google pitching targetted advertisements based on the content of the email. After this, Google reportedly said that it would personalising ads based on e-mail content and make Gmail more secure.

As per the WSJ report, Google lets "outside software developers" to scan inboxes so that personalised advertisements can be sent.

"Google does little to police those developers, who train their computers-- and, in some cases, employees -- to read their users' emails," the WSJ report says.

This comes months after the Facebook drew a major flak after it emerged that Cambridge Analytica had accessed profiles of thousands FB users. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had to apologise to the public over this. Zuckerberg had then assured that Facebook would work towards strenghthening the security system to ensure that data on its server are more secure.

The WSJ report has undoubtedly put Google on a sticky wicket and the internet giant has some serious questions to answer. Since Google is the largest e-mail services provider in the world, the response on the claims by the report would be heavily scrutinised.