Do you own a Gmail account? In all probability, yes. Chances are that your messages might be read by the employees of third-party apps. Even though Google does not allow its employees to access any users emails, the same can not be said for third-party Gmail App developers. The popular email service Gmail has currently 1.4 billion global users.
Wall Street Journal has reported that thousands of private emails have been allegedly read by staff at third-party companies with access to people’s Gmail accounts. As per their report, many companies have informed the Journal that their employees had read thousands of emails. However, no specific permission was granted by those users for such an action. One company even told the Wall Street Journal that the practice was “common” and a “dirty secret”.
Google has confirmed to the Journal that Gmail accounts of the users can be accessed by third-party app developers after which the staff members get the permission to access and read people’s emails. Users are asked to grant the permissions to read, send, delete and manage your email when connecting a Gmail account with an external management. According to the Wall Street Journal, this permission sometimes allows employees of third-party apps to read users emails.
Further, Google has said that users can go to security check-up page to see the apps they had linked to their account and which could access their messages and then could revoke access if they wanted to no longer wanted to share data with.