TL;DR: I applied for a low-paying casual remote gig job with Telus International and they require complete and ongoing access to your "primary" personal email account and browsing history to mine data for their customers. Is this normal? Am I that out-of-touch? I'd expect this from some sketchy fly-by-night marketing company, but a major international telco? Has anyone experienced this in other jobs?

Full Text: I'm switching specialties into a dumpster fire of a field after graduating from school, this past spring, and need a few extra bucks without commitment to help make ends meet. The low-commitment low-pay remote jobs offered by Telus International seemed hopeful. I thought the bullet point on the job posting, "Gmail must be your primary email account," was odd, but assumed they just needed me to have a Google account to authenticate, or something similar. I verified my Gmail address with a confirmation number, uploaded my resume, and started the questionnaire. A few questions in, they asked if I agreed to give them complete and ongoing access to my primary personal email-- a nearly 20 year old Gmail account I got when Gmail was invite-only-- and browsing history so they could mine it for data for their customers. Of course, I said no. Since they asked for the account before they gave the reason for it, I didn't even think to use an alt account, they've already got my resume and contact info tied to my regular Gmail account, and of course, that would have violated their requirements anyway-- they specifically asked for your primary personal email account.

I don't see how anyone could think a $14/hr job rating ads or the like entitles an employer to knowing nearly every love and breakup, birth and death, success and failure, purchase, friendship, job, health and family struggle, and many other things that I experienced for a large chunk of my life. After working in the white collar world for quite some time, it's eye-opening to be re-acquainted with the kind of abuse lower-income workers have to put up with. Is this normal? Am I that out-of-touch? I'd expect this from some sketchy fly-by-night marketing company, but a major international telco? Has anyone experienced this in other jobs?