[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.

This is one of those situations, where normal human mind is thrown into 
tinfoil territory. Let's dive into it. Let's have fun with this for a 
moment. Where is a black hat? :)

They know that your address is not served by gmail. They may have your 
photo from LinkedIn, or other source. You email is a proper name! 
Instead, something spooky is attached, something that is related to you 
to evoke maximum emotion, but is definitely not you. In emotions you may 
blame your provider. The only fix you have is to move to gmail, 
otherwise the other half of the planet sees a spooky image attached to 
you. Mind you, other people may care way less about this than you do. 
But hey, this is, quote, "a calculate attack on a complexity of human mind".