Thursday, 7 April 2022 — The New Dark Age

Updated:

This is the latest outrage inflicted on our right to access information and it goes one step further in the war on freedom of expression!

Previously, intercepts like the one below, only happened when you clicked on a link in your Browser but Google have taken censorship onto an entirely new level. Google now intercepts your PRIVATE EMAIL, allegedly to protect you against phishing and other online scams.

This is how it works:

The email in question arrives in your Inbox and looks normal until you click on it to open it when this message appears, replacing the content of the email!

There are two live links in the offending message, one asks you to report the ‘offending’ site by saying “This isn’t a web forgery…”

Clicking on the link: ‘This isn’t a web forgery…” takes you to the page below:

Click on it, you arrive at this Google page

You can submit a report, either for or against. Once you have submitted the report, you are presented with the following page:

If you reply, which I did, cursing the bastards for interfering with my right to information. ‘Google Safe Browsing’ [sic] but not safe from Google! The algorithm even intercepts mail from Google!

If you click on the link, “Ignore this warning”, the message disappears and the original Email message is revealed but Google have another trick up their sleeve, as any links in the message, DON’T WORK! There is however, a workaround as the actual link is there it just doesn’t work! If you can, copy the link and paste it directly into your browser (Windows and Macs use a different method to reveal the link) and you’ll get to the site in question.

This is insidious censorship masquerading as protecting the user and it reveals the true nature of Google because it means that Google is not only scanning your PRIVATE EMAIL for ‘questionable’ links but of course, for ‘questionable’ content, which means Google is actually reading the contents of your formally, private Email!

Given the ubiquitous nature of Google’s role in ALL electronic communications, short of returning to actual, physical letters, I’m not sure what can be done about this outrage but at least let’s make the world aware that this kind of outrageous interception of our communications is going on. Frankly it’s the final nail in coffin of any kind of democratic control over communications.