You can stop third-party apps from scanning your Gmail inbox, here's how

While Google is keeping the security of all the emails on its widely used platform, third-party app makers may still have access to them. The report from the Wall Street Journal said that Google still allows hundreds of software makers to scan through your Gmail inboxes and target advertisements and recommendations based on your personal information. As it turns out, there is a way to keep all those third-party app makers at bay. You can simply do it within a few steps. Here’s how.

Step 1: Google’s Security Check-up page. That is - https://myaccount.google.com/security-checkup/3

The page not just shows you the recent devices from where you have logged in to your Google account but also the third-party apps that you may have given permission to access the account information and have forgotten about it.

Step 2: Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on ‘Third-party access’.

On clicking it you will see a drop-down mentioning all the apps that have access to your Google/Gmail account. Clicking on each app will also show you what specific service the app has access to.

Step 3: If you want to remove that app’s access to your Google account, simply click on ‘Remove Access’. That’s it.

You can also remove Google service access from all those devices from where you logged in.

After the WSJ report came out suggesting that third-party app developers can scan through your Gmail inbox, Google responded in a blog post. The search giant said that it thoroughly vets the third-party apps and services that have access to the sensitive user data. Along with this, the company has also mentioned that third-party apps need to follow a proper review process in order to gain access to the user data.

Apart from this, the tech giant has also said that it shows the complete list of permissions to a user before they install an app informing them about what all data will be accessed by the app.