[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. 

https://ronaldbarnes.ca/ (and http) has only one png, Ubuntu one. Hash 
of it is known, content id may even say it is a trademark, so any other 
picture in comparison becomes a better bet! Yey, neural nets!