California Senate Passes Bill on E-Mail

California’s Senate passed a bill that would ban e-mail providers from retaining personal information from their customers’ messages. The measure was prompted by Google Inc.’s new Gmail service, which scans users’ messages and links ads to them.

The bill, by Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont), passed on a 24-8 vote and will be considered next by the Assembly.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google’s Gmail, currently in testing, filters through e-mails and selects ads to place next to them based on words it finds in messages.

Google said it was taking a neutral position on the bill.