It is, which is why seeing such poor analogies ruins the debate. There is an interesting discussion to be had, but we're doomed to be stuck in a mire of examples with postcards being delivered by scrooglers.

Processing emails in some fashion simply has to happen. But after that it becomes a tradeoff.

I might be fine with having targeted adverts within gmail, but not on external sites. I might be fine with it anywhere, and consider my emails to be equivalent to loyalty cards.

> On a more personal level they could know that you have AIDS, are pregnant, going through marital problems...

Of course they would, the data is all there. It has to be, it's in the data you're asking them to store on their servers! What they do with that information is the important thing.

> If it's there it's ready to be accessed, leaked, stolen or taken with an administrative subpoena.

As it is anywhere.