“Privacy-focused” email clients are scraping your inbox and selling your data to third parties

Ever wonder just how those “free” email apps stay in business? I mean, development takes cash, right? Well, according to Motherboard’s Joseph Cox, they’re free to you because they’re also scraping your data and selling it to third-parties.

Giving these apps access to your email inboxes in exchange for things like package tracking also gives them all the access they need to monetize your data.

If you’re using one of these popular email apps, your inbox is being scraped and sold to advertisers

Popular email apps like Edison, Cleanfox, and Slice are all scraping your email inboxes and selling anonymized versions of your data to anyone who’ll pay for it.

Now all of these companies mention that they “access and process” user emails, which makes sense since the extra features from the email apps do helpful things like package tracking, or letting you mass unsubscribe from those annoying marketing emails.

READ MORE: Remote learning apps are selling your kids’ data at an alarming rate

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They don’t explicitly say they’re selling your data though, saying things like they’re using your data for “market research.” Yikes.

• Edison, Cleanfox, and Slice are all scraping your inboxes to sell your data for profit
• They all claim to anonymize your data, but multiple recent studies have shown just how easily those methods can be backtraced to you
• Edison has also had employees read personal emails to create a new feature

I guess it’s back to Gmail? At least Google has said it won’t scrape your inboxes for advertising purposes anymore.

What do you think? Surprised these free email clients were selling your data? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Scammers prefer tricking you with malicious URLs instead of boring email attachments
• Dark mode for Gmail and Maps is officially rolling out – here’s how to turn it on
• PSA: Ring’s Android app is secretly sending your data to Facebook, Google, and more
• Facebook reports positive Q4 earnings amid the constant chaos of privacy concerns

Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere. His hobbies include photography, animation, and hoarding Reddit gold.