Google and Yahoo have recently admitted that they scan user’s email to make their advertising more relevant. Google points out that “no humans read your email” but it is not clear what limits there are on these companies’ ability to use the information they receive by scanning your email. Their terms of use agreements provide some direction but appear to offer wiggle room on what can be done with your content in their system. It is reasonable to have these concerns with other free email providers as well.
Cardinal is very concerned about information security, primarily with documents that contain sensitive information like a Social Security Number or date of birth. We are rolling out our new employer site and one of the planned upgrades is to allow clients to directly upload documents into our secure server. This will bypass the need to send Cardinal sensitive documents by email. In the mean time we advise not utilizing any service that may store sensitive information outside of your control.
Arin J. Carmack