Google Tweaks Buzz To Tackle Privacy Concerns

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.'"

Comments

The real story

[alain94040]

This blog shows what really happened:

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.

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

--
find a co-founder

Re:The real story

[Trepidity]

If she enabled Buzz, I don't see it as necessarily the case that she's misinterpreting it. When I enabled Buzz, instantly I was following 8 people, and 7 of those people were following me back, based on the fact that we'd email a bunch. As I read it, that's what she thinks happened--- that Google had her ex-husband auto-follow her, because they'd exchanged emails. Unlike Facebook, you don't have to approve followers, either. And, your Google Reader comments are by default visible to your followers, something I also didn't realize until one of those 7 followers of mine commented on a post of mine.

Now in my case those 7 auto-followers are people I actually know and don't object to following me, and I had nothing particularly private in my Google Reader comments, but it was still quite surprising and felt a bit weird that it was all done automatically. I would've felt much more comfortable if Google used email history to suggest contacts, but I still had to approve people individually before they could get access to my stuff. It'd also be nice if it asked me explicitly if I wanted my Google Reader comments shared over Buzz.

opt-out paradigm

[underwhelm]

First, I'm amazed that Google would stumble out of the blocks like this. Isn't this the same company that keeps things in "beta" and "labs" for years and years? Had this "feature" been available for the general public to play with for a month or three before bringing out the "big guns"--opt-out implementation for all gmail users--these shortcomings would have been caught and remedied before they were inflicted on unsuspecting non-power-users.

Second, I can certainly appreciate the difficulty of creating the spark of life in a new social network platform. Ordinary players in the market have to hope that lightning strikes. As Google already has learned with Orkut, if lightning doesn't strike, maybe your product can find a niche somewhere in the long tail. Or it will never come to life at all. With Buzz, Google decided they didn't want to risk a sunny day, and chose instead to play with the high voltage line. Insta-social network by compelling everyone to connect with their personal email addresses. Deservedly, they're now getting burned--Gmail was many people's default "real" personal email site. Compelling a connection between people's real personal email address to a social network (on an opt-out basis) might shake people free of that preference...

Another SNAFU that they haven't fixed yet

[Daetrin]

At least it hadn't been fixed when i tested it a couple hours ago. If you go to the profile settings there is an option called "Display my full name so I can be found in search." If you uncheck that box and save it your profile will now say "visible to the public as [whatever your nickname is]." YOu'll also get a warning about how your profile won't be searchable as long as that option is disabled, which is exactly what one would expect from the description.

However if you then try to do something with Buzz ("Like" a post or leave a comment) a browser-internal dialog will pop up asking "How do you want to appear to others?" It's a pretty small dialog with the only thing you can really select being if you want who you follow to be public or not, so clearly this is part of their solution to the complaints about privacy. However if you select "save profile and continue" you will then find that the "Display my full name" checkbox has been turned back on, without any notification at all! And of course if you uncheck it again, the next time you try to do anything with Buzz you'll have to go through the dialog again. There is an "edit" button on the dialog which opens up more options, but even under there there's no option to leave the "display full name" option unchecked. (Although it was hard to determine that since the dialog that pops up is taller than my browser window, so i had to maximize the window just to be able to see it all.)

Note that you are never told "you must make your full name public in order to use Buzz" and the option itself says nothing about Buzz, just that your profile won't be searchable. It's not clear if that's the behaviour Google wanted (which would be stupid) and they're just not telling us about it (which would also be stupid) or if they just screwed up the dialog and settings in their rush to address the privacy concerns.