Google has clarified its policy regarding access to Gmail data by outside app developers, following a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The company, which announced last year that it would not scan emails to drive advertising, acknowledges in a blog post published on Tuesday that it allows applications from other developers to integrate with Gmail.

These include “email clients, trip planners and customer relationship management (CRM) systems — so that you have options around how you access and use your email,” Google advises consumers.

It continues: “We continuously work to vet developers and their apps that integrate with Gmail before we open them for general access, and we give both enterprise admins and individual consumers transparency and control over how their data is used.

The Journal reported on Monday that Return Path and Edison Software have scanned user Gmails when developing software. However, Google and Return Path deny that emails are being “read.”

Google adds that non-Google apps cannot access Gmail data unless they:

– Accurately represent themselves. 

– Only request relevant data.

Return Path says in a blog post: “As anyone who knows anything about software knows, humans program software – artificial intelligence comes directly from human intelligence.”

It continues: “Any time our engineers or data scientists personally review emails in our panel (which again, is completely consistent with our policies), we take great care to limit who has access to the data, supervise all access to the data.”

In its own post, Google says: “We do not process email content to serve ads, and we are not compensated by developers for API access.”

It continues: “Gmail’s primary business model is to sell our paid email service to organizations as a part of G Suite. We do show ads in consumer Gmail, but those ads are not based on the content of your emails. You can adjust your ads settings at any time.

It further states that “the practice of automatic processing has caused some to speculate mistakenly that Google ‘reads’ your emails. To be absolutely clear: no one at Google reads your Gmail, except in very specific cases where you ask us to and give consent, or where we need to for security purposes, such as investigating a bug or abuse.”