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[ARTICLE · art-38427] src=discuss.privacyguides.net ↗ pub= topic=ai-policy verified=true sentiment=· neutral

I'm a beginner and have a few questions I'd like to ask.

A beginner in privacy asks whether Gmail is a bad idea despite Google's 2017 policy change and denial of using inbox for AI training, and whether to switch to ProtonMail despite its lack of automatic categorization and website acceptance issues.

read1 min views1 publishedJun 24, 2026

Hello everyone, I’m new to privacy and have many questions about it.

I’m not sure how much I care about privacy, but I’m wondering if using Gmail is really a bad idea? I’ve done a lot of research, and it seems they stopped using Gmail content for advertising in 2017, and they’ve also stated on their Twitter account that they don’t use their inbox for AI training. I don’t know if that’s enough privacy.

Even if Google had the capability to read everyone’s emails, given the sheer number of Gmail users worldwide, reading everyone’s emails sounds extremely impractical.

The only private email service provider I’m familiar with is ProtonMail, but after researching a bit more, I discovered that it seems many websites don’t accept ProtonMail because it’s anonymous. Also, ProtonMail doesn’t support automatic categorization, a feature that’s quite important to me because I receive a lot of promotional emails, and putting them all in my inbox would create chaos.

So I’m hoping someone can tell me why I should forgo the convenience and opt for the relatively difficult and expensive ProtonMail (or a similar service), or that Gmail is sufficient for me?

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