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Google Tweaks Buzz To Tackle Privacy Concerns

Posted by timothy on from the who's-zooming-who dept.

CWmike writes "Just two days after launching its Buzz social networking tools, Google said Thursday night that it had tweaked the technology to address early privacy concerns. Google said in a blog post that the quick updates makes it easier for users to block access to their pages and eases the path to finding two privacy features. 'We've had plenty of feature requests, and some direct feedback,' wrote Todd Jackson, a product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, in the blog post. 'In particular there's been concern from some people who thought their contacts were being made public without their knowledge (in particular the lists of people they follow, and the people following them). In addition, others felt they had too little control over who could follow them and were upset that they lacked the ability to block people who didn't yet have public profiles from following them.'"

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Tutorial about privacy before activating Buzz by cytoman · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Maybe I was not clear when I wrote it...I'm saying that there should have been an "activate Buzz" step. I know that there isn't.

    You can opt out by choosing the "turn off Buzz" link at the bottom of your Gmail page.

  2. Re:The real story by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, the fact is that this person, who is clearly non-technical, was misinterpreting what she was seeing. This is the fault of the engineers for writing a crappy UI (it's called "consensus presentation" in UI class guys) but no actual harm was done. None of her private Reader posts were delivered to her abusive ex-husband or the stalkers who email her - it just looked that way because she assumed that if its in her buzz feed then it's in theirs, cause that's the way it works on Twitter/Facebook. Actually, that's not precisely true, she also confused 'follower' and 'following' in a way that makes no sense for those other two services too.

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    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. Admit it, this is exemplary customer service. by mano.m · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They released a product. They got feedback from the people who use it. They acted swiftly and concretely, fixing the product by listening to the feedback and making the user experience more relevant and comfortable. I for one wouldn't mind more companies doing the same, and not just in software.

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    Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
  4. Re:The real story by DragonWriter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It shows more eloquently than any privacy advocate ever could why privacy is so important when "you don't have anything to hide."

    No, it doesn't. Because it specifically deals with a case where someone does have something to hide. (Also, it doesn't make sense, since, even with the way Buzz was set up before these change, had to be manually added and prominently displayed its sharing settings. And, further, it seems to be based on faulty assumptions about what the meaning of someone being a "follower" are and what they could see, anyhow.)

  5. Google is orthogonal to privacy by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google, the company that bought Double Click. Privacy is against their business model. Nuf sed.

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    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  6. Re:The real story by ThePhilips · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Twitter is used for public communication.

    E-mail, Gmail is front-end of, is used for private communication.

    Why the difference is so hard to understand??

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    All hope abandon ye who enter here.