Google has been trying to make Gmail a platform for outside developers to build email apps and add-ons. In doing so, it’s given hundreds of companies the ability to read people’s email wsj.com/articles/techs…
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Email apps perform useful tasks, like Boomerang for scheduling emails and Streak for managing sales prospects. Earny scans your receipts looking for products you overpaid for /2
But many email apps are free, and, surprise surprise, you’re the product. Your inbox contains valuable data -- shopping, travel, finances, personal and professional networks -- that marketers are hungry to get /3
Data-mining companies use free apps to hook users into giving up access to inboxes without clearly stating what data they collect and what they are doing with it /4
For example, I spoke with users who had no idea that by signing up for Earny, they had let another company called Return Path start scanning every new email that arrived in their inbox (it was in the fine print) /5
Return Path scans 100 mln emails a day from 2 mln users who gave the company inbox access by signing up to a free app. It collects data about which promotional emails get marked as spam and sells that information to marketers /6
Most of this scanning is done by computers. But Return Path and other email data companies occasionally have employees read emails with their own eyes in order to train their algorithms /7
Developers I spoke to said Google does little to police these practices, and yet, in many cases it’s brokering access to the data. This is the screen many Earny users would see before giving inbox access /8 
Google does let you easily check what apps have what access at this page: myaccount.google.com/security#conne… /9
Read my full story, including comments from all of these companies, here: wsj.com/articles/techs…
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