Mastodawn

How to turn off Gemini in Gmail — and why you should | Proton

https://lemmy.world/post/42024453

How to turn off Gemini in Gmail — and why you should | Proton - Lemmy.World

* In your Gmail app, go to Settings. * Select your Gmail address. * Clear the Smart features checkbox. * Go to Google Workspace smart features. * Clear the checkboxes for: Smart features in Google Workspace, Smart features in other Google products * If you have more Gmail accounts, repeat these steps for each one. * Turning off Gemini in Gmail also disables basic, long-standing features like spellchecking, which predate AI assistants. This design choice discourages opting out and shows how valuable your AI-processed data is for Google. This has finally gotten me to take steps to deGoogle my email, Fastmail trial underway.

slevinkelevra Jan 23

LOL I did and these fuckers decided to disable my widget. It only shows my inbox as empty. Yeah I definitely need to continue my de-googlifying.

I’d like to invite you to try port87.com

It’s proudly AI free.

Port87

A new kind of email.

Discord

🤔

Yeah, I really should sit down and create a Matrix server for it.

What do you like about them? Over fastmail or whatever

I meant I run it.

But to answer your question, it uses subaddressing really well. When you give your email to a company, you add a label to the address just for that company, then all of their emails go in that label. You can easily toggle things like notifications, mark as read, and show in aggbox (our version of the inbox, since there isn’t really an inbox when everything is sorted already). Then if that company leaks your email, you can block that label.

You can also set up screening labels that are meant for real people, then any new senders get screened to make sure they’re human before you get their mail.

Proton has their own AI bullshit:

At least it’s not rummaging around your email though.

Lumo: Privacy-first AI assistant where chats stay confidential

Meet Lumo, the zero-access encrypted AI assistant by Proton that does not track or record your conversations. Ask me anything — it's confidential

I don’t necessarily have a problem with offering AI. Especially in actually-useful contexts. I have a problem with it being forced on me in unwanted ones.

CosmoNova Jan 23

I have a problem with encryption possibly being a thing of the past because users I write with will put all incoming messages through some LLM because they can‘t be arsed to actually read and reply themselves.

Since when does email have encryption?

CosmoNova Jan 23

I mean in general. It doesn‘t matter what you use because the AI software will be installed on their phones.

Yes and no. If we’re talking about email, that’s completely different from Lumo, and can either be run locally or server-side with encryption, which is then immediately deleted.

https://proton.me/support/proton-scribe-writing-assistant#privacy

Get started with the Proton Scribe writing assistant | Proton

Proton Scribe is a writing assistant built into Proton Mail that helps you compose emails and improve your drafts. This article explains how it works and how to use it.

Proton

I think at this point you’re going to have to acknowledge AI is going to be there and that in itself is not the issue here. You don’t have to use it but it’s an option. And that in itself is not the problem

The problem here is It’s assholes like google and windows who enforced it and that’s where it’s being misused ethically and morally.

It’s not the thing that is the problem here. It’s how it’s being used.

the ‘AI IS WRONG’ trope is already old. It isn’t wrong. It’s being used wrong. It’s doing great in science and medical uses. Just like how plastic has its place in medical field.

It’s all about how it’s being applied.

This is like technophobes and computers.:They blame computers for hackers existing and decide computers are entirely unnecessary. fuck the nuance and digging any deeper.

Its good to clarify that it’s not end to end encrypted like their email because its not clear from their marketing wording that its not. Its very easy to presume “encrypted” is the same encryption process they are known for on their email.

The flip side of that coin is that it is a separate tool you don’t have to use. You can choose to use as many or few of their products as you wish (its not forced on you).

It’s also a plus that there is SOME encryption and attempts at privacy vs every other alternative besides self hosting.

I’ve personally found lumo to be very useful in troubleshooting computer issues that I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve learned a lot from using it, and the researching was faster than scouring forums myself and presented to me in a single pane. Its just a tool similar to a web browser. I choose a browser that helps me be private and I choose an AI tool that does the same, but I don’t expect either to actually keep me private.

Holytimes Jan 23

Yeah but lumo is basically just a side gimmick thing that isn’t integrated with the rest of their suite.

It’s basically the equivalent of a self hosted small LLM that you don’t have to fuck around with setting up.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with LLMs as a tool. The problem is the misuse, misapplication and over scaling of them.

If they were all just one off tools like lumo that are basically slightly more advanced digital assistants they would be fine.

I mean, I get that, but why is Proton offering one? What value do I get from Proton’s LLM that I wouldn’t get from any other company’s LLM? It’s not privacy, because it’s not end to end encrypted. It’s not features, because it’s just a fine tuned version of the free Mistral model (from what I can tell). It’s not integration (thank goodness), because they don’t have access to your data to integrate it with (according to their privacy policy).

I kind of just hate the idea that every tech company is offering an LLM service now. Proton is an email and VPN company. Those things make sense. The calendar and drive stuff too. They have actual selling points that differentiate them from other offerings. But investing engineering time and talent into yet another LLM, especially one that’s worse than the competition, just seems like a waste to me. And especially since it’s not something that fits into their other product offerings.

It truly seems like they just wanted to have something AI related so they wouldn’t be “left behind” in case the hype wasn’t a bubble. I don’t like it when companies do that. It makes me think they don’t really have a clear direction.

Blue_Morpho Jan 24

I have a laptop with 48GB of VRAM

???

The AMD GPU in some Frameworks have 8GB of vram.

It’s integrated graphics so it uses up to half of the system RAM. I have 96GB of system ram, so 48GB of VRAM. I bought it last year before the insane price hikes, when it was within reach to normal people like me.

SuspciousCarrot78 Jan 24

Ah; as I recall, it’s because they polled users and there was an overwhelming “yes please”, based on Proton’s privacy stance.

Given proton is hosted in EU, they’re likely quite serious about GDPR and zero data retention.

Lumo is interesting. Architecturally I mean, as a LLM enjoyer. I played around with it a bit, and stole a few ideas from them when I jury rigged my system. Having said that, you could get a ton more with $10 on OpenRouter. Hell, the free models on there are better than lumo and you can choose to only use privacy respecting providers.

I played around with it a lot yesterday, giving it documentation and asking it to write some code based on the API documentation. Just like every single other LLM I’ve ever tried, it just bungled the entire thing. It made up a bunch of functions and syntax that just doesn’t exist. After I told it the code was wrong and gave it the right way to do it, it told me that I got it wrong and converted it back to the incorrect syntax. LLMs are interesting toys, but shouldn’t be used for real work.

IEatDaFeesh Jan 25

Sounds like a skill issue. I guess you don’t know how to prompt correctly. 🤷

Feel free to try. Here’s the library I use: nymph.io

It’s open source, and all the docs and code are available at that link and on GitHub. I always ask it to make a note entity, which is just incredibly simple. Basically the same thing as the ToDo example.

The reason I use this library (other than that I wrote it, so I know it really well) is that it isn’t widely known and there aren’t many example projects of it on GitHub, so the LLM has to be able to actually read and understand the docs and code in order to properly use it. For something like React, there are a million examples online, so for basic things, the LLM isn’t really understanding anything, it’s just making something similar to its training data. That’s not how actual high level programming works, so making it follow an API it isn’t already trained on is a good way to test if it is near the same abilities as an actual entry level SWE.

Nymph

Object relational mapper for Node.js and the browser

Nymph

SuspciousCarrot78 Jan 25

Yeah. I had ChatGPT (more than once) take the code given, cut it in half, scramble it and then claim “see? I did it! Code works now”.

When you point out what it did, by pasting its own code back in, it will say “oh, why did you do that? There’s a mistake in your code at XYZ”. No…there’s a mistake in your code, buddy.

When you paste in what you want it to add, it “fixes” XYZ … and …surprise surprise… It’s either your OG code or more breaks.

The only one ive seen that doesn’t do this is (or does it a lot less) is Claude.

I think Lumo for the most part is really just Mistral, Nemotron and Openhands in a trench coat. ICBW.

I think Lumo’s value proposition is around data retention and privacy, not SOTA llm tech.

timestatic Jan 25

No one is forcing you to use it. Having a european AI like Lumo that encrypts transcripts is great in comparison to shady big tech companies. Yes I know the full context is sent each time the AI wants to generate something. But still, I’m happy they offer it.

Or… Migrate to another email service provider?

pageflight Jan 23

Like I said, working on it. But you know, this evening do I try to dismantle ICE, cook dinner, play a game, or research email providers? Lots of competing priorities in life, let’s celebrate the wins.

DaddleDew Jan 23

Step 1: Use an open source mail client that doesn’t contain trackers like FairEmail instead of Google’s app.

No further steps.

pageflight Feb 1

I’ve been enjoying FairEmail. Nice to have options like ‘would you like to remove sensitive data before attaching this image’ instead of ‘do you wish you could turn off this AI bloat’.

jordanlund Jan 23

I did all that ages ago and re-confirmed, it’s still all disabled…

But Gemini persists:

The hell? How can that be?

jordanlund Jan 23

What the column has you do is disable Gemini access in Mail, but it is still on for search.

brooke592 Jan 23

The billion-dollar company pays a lot of people to abuse its customers.

After getting into web development, I realize that no abusive tactic is an accident.

Definitely not accidental, no.

🏴‍☠️𝔊𝔯𝔞𝔳𝔦𝔱𝔞𝔰🏴‍☠️Jan 23

How to turn off Gemini in one step:

1) Stop using google’s services.

If i was actually running my own competing service I’d probably suggest switching to it instead of writing a blog post to help people use my competition, but i guess thats why I don’t work in marketing, this must be some big brained 4-d chess move.

Why does it matter if its googles “AI’ slurping up your emails, or just their massive advertising and tracking network? Do the ads seem less intrusive if they’re just coming from adsense instead of gemini? Are people actually foolish enough to think “disabling” a feature like this actually stops google from constantly scanning every single one of their emails?

TheTechnician27 Jan 23

but i guess thats why I don’t work in marketing

Yeah, I guess it is, because this article works in Proton’s favor on multiple levels:

Plenty of Proton users have switched over from Gmail, still have their old account, and still, even with forwarding, occasionally need to use those old addresses.
People who search for or are sent a guide who’ve never or rarely heard of Proton might end up on their site and read a guide that lambasts Google and its usage of AI.
Meanwhile, Proton’s alternative product is being advertised everywhere on the page outside the guide and even is advertised within it.
These guides are going to exist anyway (many, in fact). You’re acting like this is some extremely niche thing users might want to do. Having your own guide but poisoned with your marketing when you’re the underdog is a sound idea.
This gives a benevolent image of “Good Guy Proton” who just wants to keep people’s data private regardless of business – and a “Bad Guy Google” image because it’s apparently so dire that their competition has to do this.
Consumers becoming more privacy-conscious generally is a boon long-term for businesses like Proton.

You’re so smarmy about this but just come off as a complete dipshit who gave this two seconds of thought.

You had such excellent points all up until the unnecessary ad hominem at the end there. No need for name calling when you’ve already won.

TheTechnician27 Jan 23

Before I address the substance: that’s not what an ad hominem is in the context of an argument. I’d already 100% finished attacking the substance of their argument. An ad hominem would be if I fallaciously appealed to a personal characteristic (real or otherwise) to attack an argument of theirs. “You’re wrong because you’re a dipshit”.

Anyway: man, I dunno. It’s 2026, and I’ve gotten really fucking sick of being unilaterally bound by etiquette when the bullshit asymmetry principle and the Dunning–Kruger effect are being stretched to their limits by insufferable, insolent shitheads who’ve unburdened themselves of critical thinking and assume having a platform to the entire world makes them qualified to say anything about everything (I can fall into this trap too, but holy shit sometimes).

I was still more polite than they were, still exercised more critical thought than they did, and still addressed the substance, and that’s fine enough by me not to tone police myself.

Cybersteel Jan 23

It’s fellatiously idiot. So much for being smahter huh duuuuuuuuuh…

Alright, my bad, good ackshually. 👍 Let’s refer to it as name-calling.

So like, calling someone a dipshit just because you’ve run into so many people that annoy you… I dunno. If it was the same person that annoyed you over and over again, I’d get it, but, this is your first interaction with this person, right? You feel me?

🤷‍♂️ You have the right to call anyone you want a dipshit, of course, I just would like us to have civil discourse here. Everyone benefits from that, I believe. Plus, I think we’re all mostly on the same side regarding this matter. I don’t feel like this is a every polarizing issue here. 😁 Google is the enemy here, let’s not infight.

A person is also much more susceptible and inclined to listen without being called names. 😉

Have a good day today, buddy!

CosmoNova Jan 23

They probably should have given it two seconds of thought before sending it.

I mean, it’s just one person’s idea of how they think things will plan out vs another’s. No need for name-calling. 👍

🏴‍☠️𝔊𝔯𝔞𝔳𝔦𝔱𝔞𝔰🏴‍☠️Jan 23

The post is just an ad disguised as a guide and absolutely pointless. You know what else will show people how to disable gemini, googles own ai based search.

Sorry if my aversion to advertising comes off as smarmy, im tired of seeing companies go from focusing on providing one good service like email and trying to become the next one service fits all replacement for google. Instead of doing one thing extremely well it becomes a race to do as many things as they can and get people to replace one monolith with their own.

Proton is the most recent to make this shift and its obvious they want to be like google but with “privacy” as a gimmic because its only private until they get a government order telling them to do something to unmask a user or monitor an email.

TheTechnician27 Jan 23

The post is just an ad disguised as a guide

That said:

its obvious they want to be like google but with “privacy” as a gimmic because its only private until they get a government order telling them to do something to unmask a user or monitor an email.

Besides the fact that Proton is based in Switzerland where government warrants aren’t issued willy-nilly, please learn how the mathematics behind encryption works – or, if not, at least trust that it does. For emails that are sent E2EE, Proton can only have garbled data that requires a key they don’t have.

You’re just constantly talking out your ass, and I have no idea why; it’s so unearned. Like I’m not going to debate you on whether ads or corporations are good because a) I broadly agree and b) that’s just, like, our opinions, man, but then you just say shit that’s so demonstrably untrue that all I can think is: “I fucking hate what this decade has done to people.”

🏴‍☠️𝔊𝔯𝔞𝔳𝔦𝔱𝔞𝔰🏴‍☠️Jan 23

Besides the fact that Proton is based in Switzerland where government warrants aren’t issued willy-nilly, please learn how the mathematics behind encryption works – or, if not, at least trust that it does. For emails that are sent E2EE, Proton can only have garbled data that requires a key they don’t have.

Email is not end to end encrypted and this is the first of protons many misleading claims. Best case the contents is encrypted but not info like recipents address or sender’s IP. Leading to less knowledgeable activists not understanding that using protons vpn and their email together can actually lead to users giving proton more then enough info for law enforcement to track someo e down.

Proton doesnt even hide this if you look at their reports they comply with court orders regularly. In theory proton could also back door any of their users keys since everything is done on the fly in the browser and proton controls all of the code. This is something their predecessors had been ordered to do and chose to shutdown instead of complying. Somehow i dont see proton opting to close up shop just to protect a few users who theyre told are criminals.

People who actually care about encryption already had a solution long before proton, called PGP and thats yet to be broken. Why other then vendor lock in would you encourage people to use anything else? (this is a criticism i have of tuta also)

Also just fyi proton moved out of Switzerland last year for guess what… Legal reasons!

Glad to hear you agree with me and dont want to debate because literally none of what ive said is speculative.

Lavabit Founder: Gov’t “Bold-Faced Lies” & Mass Surveillance Effort Forced Me to Close My Company

Ladar Levison, founder of the encrypted email provider Lavabit, details why he was forced to shut down his company last summer after the U.S. government attempted to seize Edward Snowden’s email information and much more. The FBI was targeting Snowden after he exposed the National Security Agency’s surveillance to the world, but in doing so effectively wanted access to the accounts of 400,000 other Lavabit customers. Levison was barred from discussing the case in detail at the time, saying only that he had refused “to become complicit in crimes against the American people.” Earlier this week, a federal judge unsealed key parts of the record detailing the government’s requests from Lavabit, freeing Levison to talk more openly about what happened. “The government was telling bold-faced lies,” Levison says. “It was impossible to trust them with the access they wanted. The only option was to shut down or to become complicit in what they were seeking — the mass surveillance of my customers.”

Democracy Now!

rhythmisaprancer Jan 23

I am happy I don’t need google products for anything. I have been using Mailfence for several years and been fine with it. For folks who can leave gmail, there are multiple good options, at least for email.

tuta.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android

Tuta is always pretty quick to report on these things. 🙂

How to disable Gemini on Android, Gmail, Chrome, Photos, & Google apps. Opt out of AI tracking now! | Tuta

First Android, now Gmail, Photos, Drive an more: Google is allowing Gemini AI access to all your data – even your emails, photos, calls, and texts. Follow these steps to turn off Gemini AI on Android and in all your Google Apps.

Tuta

I need to someday self-host a gmail archive

Google promises(new window) that Gmail’s 3 billion users will benefit from a “personal, proactive inbox assistant”. But given that these features are free, what’s the catch? Make no mistake, Google isn’t doing this out of generosity. The contents of your inbox are valuable to the company.

Email used to be a more private space where your communications could potentially be intercepted by bad actors, but largely your data was your own.

I dont think that is true wrt gmail is it? Google have been scanning your messages and using that for machine learning based ad targeting since it was released.

I don’t think they meant Gmail used to be private, but email. Yes, Gmail has never been private. But, that’s why it’s free.

That doesn’t make any sense as a reason to turn off Gemini in your inbox though. Either you are ok with having your emails scanned and used in ML systems, in which case why bother turning off the feature; or you aren’t and turning off the feature doesn’t help you.

Oh, I completely agree. Using Gmail is the problem here, and no amount of settings fiddling will solve that.

SloganLessons Jan 23

Ooooorrrrrr… You knowww… Delete or stop using your google account and their services?

Because if what actually bothers you is the idea that Google is spying on your things with Gemini…

First: lol. lmao even.

Second: Sorry for the laugh, but that’s because I believe that they don’t need gemini to do that, they do it anyway regardless of your settings.

Case in point, last year google was sentenced to pay a fine because they were collecting data from their users, even though those users had tracking turned off in their settings. And I believe it wasn’t the first time, but I can’t be arsed to search for older examples.

An ad company that has trackers almost everywhere on the web and tracks you even if you’re not using their services, that understanding and studying your behaviour is a central part of their business model; and you believe that they won’t spy and track you because you asked them not to? C’mon

Bahnd Rollard Jan 23

Degoogling your self is a process and needs to be handled carefully. Realisticly, this quite difficult if your not a fruit phone user, but there is hope for people who arn’t neck deep in Apples walled garden. GraphenOS announced last year they would be expanding their range of supported devices. [Link]

Once that happens, closing the ol’ google account will be much easier or atleast use a modern smart phone without having it tied to the tornent nexus.

GrapheneOS will drop Google Pixel exclusivity with ‘major’ Snapdragon-powered devices coming

GrapheneOS is a security-focused Android experience that, to date, has been available solely on Google Pixel devices. Soon, though, a...

9to5Google

pageflight Jan 23

Thanks. Yes, Google had been evil for a long time, probably before they removed “don’t be evil.” No, let’s not be gatekeepers.

SloganLessons Jan 23

Yeah, this is one of those cases where we can’t let perfection be the enemy of action. I myself I’m in the middle of degoogling as well, and it’s a process that is taking a few months now (and will take some more).

But even if you use a googled android and still use some of their services, simply not defaulting to them for everything goes a long way. Use other browsers, use other search engines, use other email providers, etc.

But the point I was making was more about the privacy side of things. I don’t believe that leaving those AI features on or off makes that much difference at the end of the day. Google will still spy on your content, and if they want to, they will use it for AI training regardless.

I know that their policies and whatnot might say differently, but I don’t trust that they respect them.

It is very freeing seeing updates that don’t affect me much since I’ve moved on from gmail.

brooke592 Jan 23

I’m slowly moving my accounts over from gmail to protonmail.

Privacy should be the default, not the exception.

All the suggestions in this thread are good, but for anyone who doesn’t want to self-host or change providers entirely (because changing your email is an absolute pain in the ass):

At least get a different mail client. You don’t have to use the official Gmail App to access Gmail! I personally really like FairEmail, because it’s open source, has no unnecessary bells and whistles, and just works. It takes less than 5mins to download it and move Gmail over there completely, with no risk of losing any data or missing any mails.

FairEmail

Open source, privacy friendly email app for Android

bridgeenjoyer Jan 23

Or Thunderbird, I use that with my yahoo email ive had for 20 years. I cant get rid of it at this point ha

Have Thunderbird in my phone.
IMO equal and almost better than Outlook (primarily with multiple accounts)