WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw
WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw
Nicholas Carlson
Feb. 10, 2010
There is a huge privacy flaw in Google’s new Twitter/Facebook competitor, Google Buzz.
When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow.
A Google spokesperson tells us these people are chosen based on whom the users emails and chats with most using Gmail.
That’s fine.
The problem is that — by default — the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile.
In other words, before you change any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see who are the people you email and chat with most.
(Freaking out already? Here’s how to IMMEDIATELY stop following someone >)
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I declined Buzz, cause I don’t like social networking sites such as this, plus google and their recent partnership with a security agency does not impress me. Well after going back into my account there was the Buzz icon. Apparently No Thanks, means yes.
Scroll to the bottom of the page, disable Buzz, and honestly I wonder if it’s not time to disable my gmail?
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I found the following comment.
[quote]
Shelly on Feb 10, 6:53 PM said:
This still doesn’t explain why my ex-boyfriend; who I do NOT communicate with, and who I have blocked on gchat; is one of my automatic followers. Why isn’t there a way to remove him from my followers or block him like I do in chat? I do not like this.
[/quote]
Read the comment below her’s by tacomamama.
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I love google normally, but google has gone too far. I think spouses who suspect affairs can use this to find out who their significant other emails, then anyone you don’t know, set up another email account and pretend to be the spouse, only if it’s legal, or just someone else, once you confirm the identity of the person, then you can sue your spouse if they are cheating.
Ofcourse your spouse will sue google for an invasion of privacy for revealing the list of email addresses, and once they win against google, maybe google will understand why privacy is important and then we can all win.
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9711517-2.html?tag=untagged
Read the comments.
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http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/12/google-buzz-privacy/
[quote]
Google Buzz Privacy Issues Have Real Life Implications
by Robin Wauters on Feb 12, 2010
Merging something designed for public broadcasting (Buzz) with something inherently private (Gmail) was just looking for trouble.
Google is -deservedly – getting a lot of heat for the fact that its latest social product has a number of privacy flaws baked into it by design.
They’ve since made some improvements to the product, but that’s not where the story ends.
Some people think the complaints are unwarranted and the issues not all that bad, while some think it’s mostly annoying and others don’t even know there are issues yet (or that Google launched something new at all). And then there those whose lives are already being impacted by the privacy loopholes in Google Buzz – and not all in a good way.
See for example this story of an anonymous woman who writes a (self-proclaimed) feminist blog, which she started after leaving an abusive marriage. (found on Hacker News)
Hint: the title is ‘Fuck you, Google’.
An excerpt:
I use my private Gmail account to email my boyfriend and my mother.
There’s a BIG drop-off between them and my other “most frequent” contacts.
You know who my third most frequent contact is?
My abusive ex-husband.
Which is why it’s SO EXCITING, Google, that you AUTOMATICALLY allowed all my most frequent contacts access to my Reader, including all the comments I’ve made on Reader items, usually shared with my boyfriend, who I had NO REASON to hide my current location or workplace from, and never did.
You can read the rest of the story in the blog post, but needless to say this woman is justifiably very angry with the Mountain View company.
?[/quote]
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