gmail-secure

Google has confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that it will no longer scan student Gmail accounts for ads. The practice was called into question last week as part of a court case in which Google has been accused of violating wiretap laws.  Google had been scanning student Gmail accounts for advertising purposes after the practice was scrutinized during a recent court case Google has announced its stopping the process.

Google Apps for Education is a free service used by more than 30 million students, teachers and administrators, offers Gmail email accounts, calendars, cloud storage, document creation, websites and plethora of other services Google related. Many schools have gotten rid of traditional Windows computers and gone with Chrome Books for teaching.

Google revealing as part of its response to the lawsuit that it does scan Gmail accounts for the students who are signed up to use its Google Apps for Education program. While Google Apps for Education is free from ads, the search giant still scanned more than 30 million accounts so that it could potentially target ads to students on other Google properties.

Google is also reportedly planning to disable email scanning on its Google Apps services for businesses and government too. This information comes right on the cusp of Microsoft launched a special ad-free version of Bing for schools. School administrators can enable an ad-free version of Bing with always-on Safe Search web security and adult content filtering. A pilot program kicked off last August and more than 4.5 million children in more than 5,000 schools have been using the special version of Bing ever since.