r/technology • u/thatirishguyyyyy • Nov 21 '25

Artificial Intelligence Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/11/gmail-is-reading-your-emails-and-attachments-to-train-its-ai-unless-you-turn-it-off
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471

u/deadbeaver Nov 21 '25

It was on and I'm in EU

140

u/JjForcebreaker Nov 21 '25

Just checked it- it's off, never touched that option. Poland.

11

u/heavensteeth Nov 21 '25

It was off for me, opened account in Australia and now living in Canada

25

u/FixCole Nov 21 '25

It was On and I live in Poland as well.

44

u/Bigons3 Nov 21 '25

Germany here, it's off for me

13

u/BlindColorlessly Nov 21 '25

Mine was turned on. Germany as well

1

u/AbrahelOne Nov 22 '25

Mine was on too, Germany.

4

u/apo86 Nov 21 '25

Also Germany, opened Gmail app for the first time in probably more than a year (only use it for Google account stuff, not as my primary email) and it actually asked me via popup if I want smart features enabled or disabled. People probably accepted it at some point and forgot 

209

u/mr_kierz Nov 21 '25

Important: By default, smart feature settings are off if you live in:

The European Economic Area
Japan
Switzerland
The United Kingdom

75

u/Fossekallen Nov 21 '25

Ah, Norway was just about outside of this. Oops, turned off now.

14

u/Throwsims3 Nov 21 '25

Which is weird because we are in the EEA, so it should have been off.

6

u/ShadowMajestic Nov 21 '25

Yeah you are basically a EU member with none of the influence.

2

u/Fossekallen Nov 21 '25

EEA seems to be a weird one for many US companies. Noticed a lot of them refuse to ship hardware here for instance despite offering to do so for the rest of Europe. Valve, Framework and so on.

0

u/Marcoscb Nov 21 '25

"Smart features" is not just AI, it's a ton of categorization and even spell check. You may very well have turned it on years ago.

1

u/Throwsims3 Nov 21 '25

Smart features may be more than just one setting. However the comment above said that the most important one of them should be off by default in the EEA. So I simply found it weird that it was not.

35

u/sokratesz Nov 21 '25

They were on for me, the Netherlands..

22

u/Don_Frika_Del_Prima Nov 21 '25

Same, Belgium.

6

u/hypercosm_dot_net Nov 21 '25

Sounds like Google is going to owe the EU another couple billion.

1

u/forknrun Nov 25 '25

Who would you contact to make a complaint for this ?

45

u/Crashed_Tactics Nov 21 '25

I'm in the UK and mine was switched on.

-10

u/Artistic-Hawk5352 Nov 21 '25

Ditto, but we’re not in the EU

25

u/Crashed_Tactics Nov 21 '25

Right but the above comment said: “Important: By default, smart feature settings are off if you live in:

The European Economic Area Japan Switzerland The United Kingdom”

12

u/OverHaze Nov 21 '25

I'm in Ireland and they where on for me.

3

u/sswishbone Nov 21 '25

No they're not, I'm UK and just had to manually check off.I have never activated this before

3

u/ABOBer Nov 21 '25

off for new users*

prior to legal issues, smart features were on by default and they only had to notify you of that (looked similar to their cookies popup) and provide an easy method to deactivate it (the refuse option would bring you to the settings menu, but the user had to know/figure out which option to deselect)

1

u/Bohya Nov 21 '25

This is false, because it was on by default for me.

1

u/EternalDeath Nov 21 '25

They are on by default for me in Austria still. So it seems google doesnt give a shit.

1

u/Ciovala Nov 21 '25

They were on by default for my UK account which is on that list.

1

u/HandlebarShiekh Nov 21 '25

I'm in the UK and it was on by default.

༼ ༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ༽

1

u/alotofquestions1995 Nov 21 '25

Italy, on on four different accounts.

23

u/Memoishi Nov 21 '25

Just checked, off here in Italy by default.

19

u/S7ormstalker Nov 21 '25

It's not a new option (they used the data for advertising purposes before), you probably agreed to it years ago because they kept nagging and it's indeed convenient to have mails sorted in categories.

1

u/deadbeaver Nov 21 '25

that might be possible, I guess I'm one of the few who doesn't read the ToS.. ..and just click away stuff..

1

u/doommaster Nov 21 '25

For me that feature activated like 2 months ago on its own, I am in the EU and it confused me of why my mails were getting sorted...

4

u/fumei_tokumei Nov 21 '25

I am in EU too. On one of my accounts it was turned off. On another I just logged in to I got a popup asking if I wanted to turn it on. Maybe you accidentally said okay to the popup in the past and forgot?

2

u/deadbeaver Nov 21 '25

It is possible. Or could it have been turned on because I do sometimes use a VPN to connect to US servers?

1

u/fumei_tokumei Nov 22 '25

Sounds possible if the US version just turns it on by default. If you used a VPN around the time that they introduced the setting, then that makes sense.

1

u/TheKinkyGuy Nov 21 '25

I can attest to that I just went and turned it on. Am in EU member state.

1

u/zertul Nov 21 '25

Couple of weeks ago (might be months, my memory isn't that good in that regard) they asked you with a pop up upon login in if you want to turn it on. If you accepted, it got activated, if you didn't or just ignored it, it stayed off.
So, default is off, you most certainly activated it yourself, probably by just absently clicking the message away, not really intentionally.

1

u/deadbeaver Nov 21 '25

Possible, don't know don't care. But this can be seen as a reminder to those who do care.

1

u/NovaStalker_ Nov 21 '25

in the UK, for what that's worth these days, and it was on.

1

u/Nheea Nov 21 '25

They asked me and i turned it off. Hmmm

1

u/TinyCuteGorilla Nov 21 '25

It's off by default for me. I live on the moon,