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Lawmakers Ask For FTC Investigation of Google Buzz

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the always-with-the-investigating dept.

angry tapir writes "Eleven US lawmakers have asked the FTC to investigate Google's launch of its Buzz social-networking product for breaches of consumer privacy. The representatives — six Democrats and five Republicans from the House Energy and Commerce Committee — noted in their letter that Google's roll-out of Buzz exposed private information of users to Google's Gmail service to outsiders. In one case, a 9-year-old girl accidentally shared her contact list in Gmail with a person who has a 'sexually charged' username, the lawmakers said in the letter."

14 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. There. Fixed that for you. by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "In one case, a 9-year-old girl accidentally shared her contact list in Gmail with a person who has a 'sexually charged' username, the lawmakers said in the letter."

    In one case, the parents of a 9 year old girl weren't paying attention, like they should have been, while their daughter surfed the web and they were upset at their lack of parenting skills and decided it imperative that they defer to the Federal Government to help them solve this problem.

    1. Re:There. Fixed that for you. by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Old "parenting skills": 1) Place child in front of TV. 2) Insert Disney DVD 3) Press "Play". 4) Return in 90 minutes. 5) Repeat.

      New "parenting skills": 1) Place child in front of computer. 2) Turn on computer. 3) Before going to bed, put the child in bed.

      It is said that our children are the future . . . so let's worry about them then, and not now.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    2. Re:There. Fixed that for you. by Tharsman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "In one case, a 9-year-old girl accidentally shared her contact list in Gmail with a person who has a 'sexually charged' username, the lawmakers said in the letter."

      In one case, the parents of a 9 year old girl weren't paying attention, like they should have been, while their daughter surfed the web and they were upset at their lack of parenting skills and decided it imperative that they defer to the Federal Government to help them solve this problem.

      Maybe, just maybe, mommy and daddy did their work and considered Gmail safe. And maybe, just maybe, Google decided it was OK to opt everyone into Buzz without letting anyone know about it.

      People in /. love to blame this kind of stuff on parents, but fact is, Google pushed Buzz into any gmail user without informing properly. It just suddenly showed up there. You would have to do daily audits of every single action your child takes in the internet if you wanted to catch this, and even then it would had been easy to miss the change.

    3. Re:There. Fixed that for you. by Red+Flayer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Meh. You left out a few, here's one:

      Older "parenting skills": 1) Place child in yard. 2) Go back to whatever you were doing 3) Whup the kids if they get back after dinnertime.

      Here's the thing... a lot of parents just don't understand that letting their kids use the internet unsupervised puts them in potential contact with EVERY person who also has internet access. Period.

      This requires fundamental differences in how child's play is supervised, if you wish to avoid the headaches unfettered internet access creates. Because of the limited (and/or different) danger posed by other recreational activities, parents need to understand that they need to be much, much more participatory in internet activity with their kids than with other things their kids do.

      Unfortunately, many parents either don't realize this, don't make the time for it, or don't care.

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    4. Re:There. Fixed that for you. by Dunega · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Maybe, just maybe, mommy and daddy did their work and considered Gmail safe.

      Maybe, just maybe, but most likely not. A 9 year old should not be using the internet unsupervised, period.

    5. Re:There. Fixed that for you. by PatHMV · · Score: 3, Insightful

      THAT was the problem with Buzz. If you had a Gmail account, suddenly one day, BOOM! You had a Buzz account, too. There's a great deal of debate whether any action at all on the user's part was required in the initial launch to create the publicly shared "followers" list based on your contacts, but at most, a very poorly worded "confirmation" button was clicked. Even if you told Google, on the splash page announcing Buzz, that you were not interested in learning more about it, a "Buzz" label was still placed on your Gmail page, and clicking that link most definitely activated a "Buzz" account. It's really a misnomer to talk of a separate "Buzz" account, because it was part and parcel, and remains so, of the Gmail service. Even now, having turned off every bit of Buzz that I possibly can with Google, it's still possible for people to "follow" my Gmail account. They can't actually see anything I do, Google swears to me, but the mere fact that I can have followers means that just by virtue of having a Gmail account, I am at least some part of the Buzz system. In other words, it ain't the parents' fault that the child had a Buzz account. Facebook, yeah, you can hold the parents responsible for that, because it takes actual conscious action by a user to go to Facebook and create an account and give it information about yourself. Google removed that hassle from us by adding us into Buzz whether we wanted to or not. Buzz is the most obnoxious and evil thing Google has ever done.

    6. Re:There. Fixed that for you. by mthorman100 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Really old parenting skills: Teach the child to read, write, and use logic and give them access to a public library. Learn how to yell at kid for reading in the dark or under the covers after bedtime using a flashlight. If parents are illiterate and don't believe that reading and writing are useful skills, remind them that getting a civil service job requires a written test as does a driver's license. Really really old parenting skills: Turn child over to tutor and nanny (if you're rich) and send child into apprenticeship when he is five or six (if you don't have money, but have some contacts) or teaching him how to look pitiful and beg. Or just keep having more children so the older ones have to care for the younger ones and/or work in the fields. Really, really, really old parenting skills: send the kids to Grandma and the great aunts. Run off with handsome stranger. I've also finally figured out what the acronyms stand for: DNS = Depressed Nodal Syndrome IP = Ischemic Priority Urether-Renal Prolapse But now it all makes even less sense than it did before. My CC needs caffeine.

  2. Won't somebody think of the children by Useful+Wheat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Please! Won't somebody think of the children surfing the internet without adult supervision! Gmail only added people that you had repeated email correspondence with, which means that the 9 year old girl was perfectly capable of picking up sexual predators on her own. Also? Putting any kind of responsibility on the parents is clearly across the line.

  3. Adaptation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you suddenly discovered a way of phrasing your requests to your boss that always got you what you wanted, wouldn't you always try to phrase things that way?

    We are the bosses of the politicians, so when the politicians realize that they can get whatever they want if they wave the for-the-children flag, I think we can easily understand why they do it so often.

  4. Oh wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You know, one time I accidentally almost made a left turn when I should have made a right turn, maybe we can investigate traffic lights next.

            -- "UberCharged"

  5. Re:Evil by Jawn98685 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hey, it's an election year and I need all the mileage I can get out of whatever "...protected the children..." headlines I can generate, you insensitive clod.

  6. Why Does a 9 Year Old Need an E-Mail Address? by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The cellphone thing I get. "I'm lost, bad man following me," understood. But an e-mail address? Doesn't fly. It's not like e-mail is some great technological novelty, the quicker a child is exposed to it, works with it, develops skills with it, the better s/he will do later on in school. Use of e-mail is monkey-hammer dead simple, is "mastered" in twenty minutes. And the only "social networks" the kid needs to be on is the one that ensures she gets a good seat on the school bus or cafeteria table.

  7. Re:that's why I have a hotmail account... by mweather · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "t's pretty clear that the users of these services are the product," As is the case of every single ad supported medium. TV, news, magazines, search engines, blogs, you name it.

  8. friends by jonpublic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let's say I have some friends who despite my best efforts still do drugs. They have destructive tendencies. I try and help them out, steer them away from bad choices and towards good choices.

    Do I really want someone who've I've emailed about a job to suddenly know that I am associated with people who have active drug problems?

    Better yet, why should anyone else have access to the list of people I communicating with? People seem to be ignoring the privacy issue here and focusing on the 9 year old and the Google can do no harm bullshit.