You get a gig. Google promises to read your mail.

That may be fine with you. But did you ask your friends, family and colleagues? GMail will be reading their mail, too. Could you be ratting out your friends?

Gmail’s privacy statement doesn’t say. In all fairness, neither does Yahoo, Brightmail, AOL… at least in pre-subscriber areas.

MessageLabs’ statement is fairly draconian:”If you send any communications or materials to the Site by electronic mail or otherwise, including any data, questions, comments, suggestions, or the like, all such communications are, and will be treated as, non-confidential and non-proprietary. Anything you transmit or post may be used by us or its affiliates for any purpose, including, but not limited to, reproduction, disclosure, transmission, publication, broadcast, and posting. Furthermore, we are free to use, without any compensation to you, any ideas, concepts, know-how, or techniques contained in any communication you send to the Site for any purpose whatsoever, including, but not limited to, developing, manufacturing, and marketing products using such information.”

Does MessageLabs’ policy cover only public areas? We can only hope. But you shouldn’t have to sign up to find out how someone’s going to handle your privates.

So if no email service protects your correspondents, why pick on GMail? Because GMail is the only email service that promises to read your mail. Not that the others couldn’t… or wouldn’t.