Email users don’t know about targeted advertising

It may be common practice among the free email providers to scan emails and then use this information to target advertising to their customers.

However, in a recent survey it seems that around forty per cent of free email users did not know about their email hosts scanning every word of their email messages.

In the survey, around a third of free email users believed that they should have been able to opt out of having their emails scanned for advertising purposes.

However if this was part of the sign up process then it is likely that the email service, without targeted advertising, would not be free at all.

Although it has to be said that two per cent of those who answered the survey agreed that targeted advertising was in their best interest, whatever that means!

This clearly shows that in this case over a third of those surveyed was unaware of this and therefore is a clear indication for openness about this type of advertising when users sign up.