[kwlug-disc] GMail, profile photo, and privacy: HOW'd it DO that?!?

[Mikalai Birukou]

> Hi,
>
> I was handed a phone yesterday to enter my email address into the To: 
> field of their GMail app.
>
> It auto-completed to ron at ronaldbarnes.ca, which is hosted at Gandi.net 
> and has *nothing* to do with Google.
>
> Along with the auto-completion (which may have come from the phone 
> owner's email history - we've exchanged mail before), a profile 
> picture appeared.
>
>
> It was the profile photo of my *parents'* account.
>
> I was astounded!
>
> After contemplating the possibilities, I decided that my email address 
> must be listed as a recovery address for parents' account.

Questions inspired by instances that go by meme "Neural nets use as if 
it is an AI":

- Have your parents ever emailed to your quoted address from their 
google phone, or may be even their gmail account?

- Have your parents ever gave your address to someone else, relative, 
friend, "possible help with computer needed"? And even if your parents 
never used gmail for this, other side could've been a gmail, where 
content of email is read, ... to provide ... this.

...

Yes. It feels more like content of email that has to be fed into less 
precise neural net general sausage machine.