Private Gmail messages ‘can be read’ by outside app developers

Around 1,000 complaints about safeguarding in aid agencies have been made since the Oxfam sex scandal in February, the head of the Charity Commission has said.

Chief executive Helen Stephenson said the number of reports made in the past four months was around the same as it received in the whole of 2016/17.

Oxfam was plunged into crisis in February after it emerged some of its workers in Haiti engaged in “sex parties” with prostitutes in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake.

The scandal rippled out to other aid organisations, including Save The Children.

The commission previously revealed in April it had opened 440 new cases after receiving 523 fresh reports in February and March. Third-party app developers can read some users’ Gmail messages, Google has confirmed.

Questions have been raised by reports in the US about how aware people are that they are agreeing to share private emails. In response, Google has reminded users that whenever someone adds an app to their account they must explicitly provide developers with permission to access their data.

Permissions including “view your email messages when the add-on is running” must be agreed to before anyone can start using the apps.

Google’s API services policy states there should be “no surprises for Google users”.