How would you feel if you learned that the U.S. Postal Service was opening and reading every letter you sent or received from your clients, scanning the letters so it could market additional products to you and also claimed it had the right to disclose the contents of your mail to anyone it wanted? You would be outraged.
Fortunately, it is a federal offense for someone to read your mail. It isn't a federal offense, however, for an email provider to do exactly what the post office cannot — email providers can read, store and even disseminate the contents of your email, and do so with impunity. Why? Because when you signed up for your account, you agreed to their terms of service, which you almost certainly didn't read.
