Russian Lawyer Sues Google For Reading His Emails

In a lawsuit, Google is charged with reading the emails of a Russian university law lecturer. He has filed a lawsuit against the internet company and demanded that it should be stopped, even as $750 compensation should be given for the "moral damage".

"Some time ago I noticed that my correspondence on the internet was read, and it was none other than a Google robot," Anton Burkov told Russian newspaper "Izvestia". "Shortly after I wrote emails, advertisements of goods and services close to the themes of the letters appeared on Google's webpage."

Burkov said that at first, he referred to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in his emails, but next he saw advertisements of cheap flights to Strasbourg and legal services on the same webpage, according to opinion34.com

Burkov felt that Google could have got to know about his interests only after reading his mails. However, he was not asked for his permission, nor did it occur to him that his mails were going to be read, according to rt.com.

As the chief of the European Law department at Yekaterinburg University, Burkov is now trying to get the courts to stop Google from prying into his private mails.

His charge filed in a Moscow district court is targeting the creation of a precedent in order to protect Russians from getting misused or violated. In a trial planned for February 16, the Google robot keeps an eye on users even as it peeps into their messages, analyzes what they prefer and hence rigs up "contextual advertising".

In Russia, the Google office countered that this kind of technology was just a special way of analyzing such emails automatically. Hence, Google is trying to offer user security and monitoring of spam messages as well as malware. Even though the information is scanned, the private information is protected and even the employees working here cannot read mails through the SSL-encryption and two-stage authentication screens. No comments on future emails were available.

However, experts have added that "the problem is not new and such a lawsuit has been expected", according to rt.com.