Google's decision to stop scanning Gmail users' emails in order to target them with personalised adverts has been given a qualified welcome by privacy campaigners. The tech firm revealed the change in a blog at the end of last week. Google promised to make the move before the year's end to bring the consumer version of Gmail in line with its business edition. The firm had faced much criticism over the years for the scans. Gmail man

The measure helped justify the cost of offering the public one gigabyte of "free" webmail storage in 2004 - an offer that was so much greater than the competition at the time that many originally believed it to be a joke. However, UK-based campaign group Privacy International tried to block the scans once it became apparent they were the cost of signing up to the service. The organisation tried and failed to get the country's data privacy regulator to intervene.

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