Google Wrestles With Privacy Bugs In Google+

CWmike writes "Google's new social networking site, Google+ — built to beat Facebook primarily on privacy features — has several privacy bugs the company is working to fix. While some enthusiastic beta testers clamor for Google to open the social networking site to everybody now, it's clear Google needs to address these issues before launching Google+ more broadly. Stumbling right out of the gate over privacy problems would likely doom Google+'s chances of emerging as a viable, realistic rival to Facebook, which rules the social networking market with about 700 million account holders. So far, beta testers have been mostly positive about Google+, particularly over its design to make it easier for users to share posts and content with different sets of people, as opposed with their entire list of contacts. Many of the existing privacy bugs in Google+ revolve around the site's mechanism to block users, according to this published list."

Comments

Jonesin'

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we just talk about BitCoin?

Re:Jonesin'

[Kamiza Ikioi]

It's been bought by Google and rebranded +Coin.

Tracker to prevent violations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google+ needs a tracker to prevent violations. Otherwise, how will people come to the garbage of this place and realize it? Sorry.

Side note: Google+ looks interesting.

Re:Tracker to prevent violations.

[dotmax]

Stumbling right out of the gate over privacy problems would likely doom Google+'s chances of emerging as a viable, realistic rival to Facebook, which rules the social networking market with about 700 million account holders

Editorialize much?

Is it even possible...

[AngryDeuce]

Will anyone ever create a social network firmly rooted in personal privacy? Are the two mutually exclusive?

Re:Is it even possible...

[Anonymous Coward]

diaspora?

Re:Is it even possible...

[icebraining]

You mean, the software where as long as you were logged on, you could do anything, since they had no authorization checks?

Re:Is it even possible...

[RoFLKOPTr]

Will anyone ever create a social network firmly rooted in personal privacy? Are the two mutually exclusive?

How in the hell would a social network work when you keep everything private? That's called a diary. They sell those at Ideal Stationary for $15 if you want a fancy one.

At least it's not like Buzz

[Daetrin]

I'm still not happy with their attempt to force us to use our real identities for social networking (though to be fair, it's not that that's any different from what Facebook tries to do) but i am definitely happy that they're going with a by invite beta test this time rather than rolling it all out to _everyone_ at once, privacy "bugs" and all, like they did with Buzz.

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[RJFerret]

I have never used my "real" identity with Google, I do not know where you are getting the idea that you must?

Unlike Facebook, which actively would delete accounts made representing your virtual identities and insist on verifying real information.

The later was useless to me, as my entire presence for decades is based on me, not my real name (which happens to co-exist with a celebrity, making it useless).

With Google thankfully, there is no name requirement, no verification, no cross referencing, just me, and whatever I choose to put in the name fields, which is no different than it has been all along.

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, either way, Facebook really does need some sort of competition to spur them to think a bit more abut their privacy features... And from the looks of Google+, the UI (For, I think, the first time in history for Google) is actually well thought out. I am kinda excited... I kind of hope to see some of the old Google Wave feature set brought into it (Wave was never a big success, but it definitely had some features that would be useful in a really big social networking site).

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[Daetrin]

I have never used my "real" identity with Google, I do not know where you are getting the idea that you must?

Perhaps "force" is too strong a word, but it's certainly an attempt to encourage you to do so with some steps taken to enforce the encouragement.

The gripe i have in particular is that everything seems to be pretty publicly linked with your Google email account. In order to to use Buzz and now presumably Google+ you have to create a Google Profile and provide a "real" name. There's nothing stopping you from providing a fake name in the profile of course, but it's going to be publicly linked with your email account.

So _if_ you originally picked an email name (back when it seemed like all it was going to be was an email name) that is rather identifiable with your real life identity there's no way to hide behind an alias using that account, unlike a lot of other social services which doesn't automatically share the email address you used to sign up for the service with everyone.

Now of course there's nothing stopping you from creating a new email address and setting up a profile for that one (once it comes out of beta of course) but then you've got to deal with migrating relevant stuff over from your old account to your new account.

And of course that's not even considering the fact that because they publicly link your email address with your profile and encourage you to use your real name for your profile then it's quite likely that a number of the people you'd want to include in your friend circles (or whatever they're called) will be using their real names (or something that is trivially linked with their real identities) which means that pretty soon it will probably be possible to figure out your real identity just from social analysis based on your connections.

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[master5o1]

Create new Google Account. Join Google+, fill with profile with random data.

As soon as you add friends to your circles, or your friends add you to their circles, then they will be able to determine enough about you by inference.

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Now of course there's nothing stopping you from creating a new email address and setting up a profile for that one (once it comes out of beta of course) but then you've got to deal with migrating relevant stuff over from your old account to your new account.

Um, what? Google Mail makes it exceedingly easy to setup multiple alias accounts all managed by one master account. By setting up filters you can forward between Gmail accounts, or you can use POP3 to pull mail (from Gmail or other email providers). Gmail's plus-addressing feature makes it trivially easy to determine from where the emails are forwarded. It also lets you send email on behalf of other accounts by forging the from: field.

I had around 9 Gmail/GApps/Live accounts a few years back, all managed from one non-public Google account. Any email that wasn't forwarded by me was automatically trashed. That was before I permanently deleted all 5 of my Google accounts (for reasons I won't mention).

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[Daetrin]

First of all that's kind of a pain, and second of all since many of your friends probably went along with Google's encouragement and used their real names it's possible that other people who aren't your friends could make the same inference as well, which could be a problem if privacy is of concern for you.

I'm not saying it's impossible to be at least somewhat private using Google+ and I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to be public and share that kind of info if they want, but the fact that Google tries to make it a "difficult to opt-out" scenario depending on what email name you chose for your original account bugs me a bit.

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[rsborg]

The later was useless to me, as my entire presence for decades is based on me, not my real name (which happens to co-exist with a celebrity, making it useless).

Is that celebrity some no-talent ass clown?

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[PhxBlue]

The later was useless to me, as my entire presence for decades is based on me, not my real name (which happens to co-exist with a celebrity, making it useless).

Let me guess: Michael Bolton?

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[dakameleon]

If you have an issue with your real identity being too easy for people to "infer" when you're using a fake name on a social network... I'm thinking social networks aren't for you. What, are you Batman?

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I don't think google is forcing 1 identity, infact google + now allows switching between accounts, so you can have multi identities out there on the Google + land!

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Pehaps some of us actually listened to the dialogue ongoing since oh... I dunno... 1983 or so... and actually thought about the future, which, you know, happens... so some of us actually thought about things in depth and extensively, unlike buzzcloud word jargon people, as saw the implications and took action to disperse our "personal profiles" to many segregated and compartmentalized areas in order to assure that we wouldn't be forced to migrate anywhere, having had the foresight to understand the uses of compartmentalized knowledge just like we do in everyday real physical life?

It might be that.

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[Daetrin]

Yeah, i've been paying attention and doing that too. I've been compartmentalizing my "personal profiles" and by now i've got at least a dozen different profiles on various "social" sites and i also have at least six different email addresses. However Google is the only company i've dealt that decided to take one of my pre-existing email addresses and convert it into a public social profile.

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[yuhong]

Personally I'd encourage people to use their real identities too whatever possible (I do). Yes, I know it is not always possible in the real world. Many of the problems can be fixed, but of course many of the fixes. will take time.

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[DaVince21]

You can choose to hide your real name, or any other detail about you, to the world wide public, and you can set up a nickname for yourself. If you ask me, that seems like a huge step up from Facebook.

Re:At least it's not like Buzz

[g253]

Agreed, this is very irritating. I signed up for e-mail, not for some other stuff. Now I have people tagging me in pictures, and I received e-mail notifications in the middle of the night about a service I don't want and never asked for.
I might have given it a try otherwise, but since it's forced on me like that, I won't touch it.

GOOGLE? PRIVACY???

[sakura the mc]

LOL

"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[gcnaddict]

as opposed with their entire list of contacts

Is this seriously a positive point? I've been able to select and block specific groups on my status messages, images, albums, etc. on Facebook for at least the last two years.

Come to think about it, Circles in Google+ are simply Facebook Lists and Groups merged together in disguise. I get better permission granularity, get all the group chat features I want in Groups... am I simply not seeing the allure Google+ supposedly offers? I'm all for tossing Facebook, but in all honesty, another centralized platform (especially one owned by an advertisement near-deity) just seems like a terrible idea.

I wouldn't mind an update on Diaspora right about now.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true that Circles are not a new concept, but the implementation is what makes it feel new. Facebook's lists are hard to use and are opaque. You have to go a few layers deep and they're not immediately visible or usable from the top level. Google decided to make Circles a core part of the presentation. The first thing you do when you sign up is put people in circles, and you can't make a post without picking a circle to post to. The fact that it is easy and transparent is what makes it so great. It's the classic development: They didn't invent it, they just made it usable.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[21mhz]

Come to think about it, Circles in Google+ are simply Facebook Lists and Groups merged together in disguise. I get better permission granularity, get all the group chat features I want in Groups... am I simply not seeing the allure Google+ supposedly offers?

A web UI that's convenient and easy to use. Facebook's privacy settings for posting are buried too deep to be handy. Facebook lists are also a lot more tedious to set up; in Google+ you can assign people to circles easily from many places, including the notification that they have added you.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[smellsofbikes]

I'd love a Diaspora update, too, but in the last three months I've seen precisely zero activity there. Could just be my friends... but there is an uneasy balance between attracting/retaining enough people to get networking effects, and still ensuring their privacy. One thing I like about Google+ is it starts out with limited posting and limited circles and you have to work to reduce your privacy. It appears to me that Facebook has worked in exactly the opposite manner: you have to work to block and filter groups out. (I may be wrong: I used facebook briefly about three years ago.) When Google launched Buzz, they did something like opt-out rather than opt-in: Buzz included everyone on Google. That seemed to piss off a *lot* of people. I could understand why they did it: it got lots of people involved. But the bad press it got seemed like it overwhelmed any possible benefits of network effects. This time Google looks like they're trying something closer to Diaspora and hoping that because it's Google it'll be used by people other than privacy-obsessed techies (who are, or at least claim to be, actively repulsed by networking effects.)

One other interesting effect I've seen is that Buzz, which was getting more interesting over time, has really dropped off since G+ launched, because everyone who was on Buzz is now spending their effort on G+, and there are *lots* of new people on G+ as well. It'd be kind of sad if that was the main competitor that G+ killed.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[gcnaddict]

and you see, I have a problem with this implementation.

Specifically, it takes me back to high school. It's fine and dandy, but half the goal of social networks is to keep networking, not to lock oneself to certain groups and isolate those groups from each other. I occasionally have a need to limit something to specific people, but I often want everyone to see my thoughts (as posted) to a) blend everyone's input together and b) give people an opportunity to expand their own social circles.

I just feel like Google's implementation here, while flashy, does nothing but isolate perspectives, ideas, and entire social groups even further. I suppose only time will tell whether Google's approach is better or worse, but I feel it will contribute to one of the few things the web allowed us to move away from: perspective bubbles.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Microlith]

I've been able to select and block specific groups on my status messages, images, albums, etc. on Facebook for at least the last two years.

As have I, however it is difficult and leaves you open to holes.

Specifically with Facebook, everyone is part of the "Friends" list, and you can't remove people from it without unfriending them, at which point they can see nothing. Some set of people you may not want to see all of your posts, so you can create a list and put people in these blocked lists. However, these changes are not retroactive. So if you create a group later on, you can't deny visibility of older posts to people in that group, and then you get into a complex mess of exceptions and multiple lists with different rules.

Now with Google+ these visibility settings are not retroactive either, however until you place someone in a group that a post is visible to they cannot see any posts. They are in a limbo-like "unclassified" state, only able to see public posts. As you place them into groups, their post visibility increases. Then if you want to really get complex you can create different circles, which are much easier to target with posts than general posts with lots of visibility rules that have to be applied.

After all, some people are more acquaintances or professional contacts whereas some people are friends and yet others are family. So you can much more tightly control what people can see, and who can see it. An easy way to think of it, at least for a Slashdotter, is the difference between a firewall that defaults to ALLOW and specifies what to DENY, versus a firewall that defaults to DENY and specifies what to ALLOW. One of these ways is more secure than the other. Google+, at first glance, seems to default to the more secure way.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Anonymous Coward]

i know this is still a total deal with the devil, but the first thing to win me over was that google has the simple option to delete your account, right out in the open. it also allows for you to download all your information and take it with you if a better service exists.

But, what really made me sign up is that I've already given them my email account with gmail, so there's very little more that they can dig up from me. That's somewhat depressing, but oh well...

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[EastCoastSurfer]

Then just post to all your circles or go twitter style and post public.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Anonymous Coward]

Then create a fucking circle with all your fucking friends in it and spam them all you like.

Jesus Christ, do we really have to think for you?

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Snarky McButtface]

Most people have made their own social circles. I mostly keep my work and private life separate. I certainly do not share what happens with my friends with my family either. If this is done properly, it will be nothing more than an extension of what most people do naturally.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[gcnaddict]

See, that's an opt-in procedure.

My point is that the opt-in nature of being able to broadcast isolates thoughts and perspectives, defeating the very point of a social network.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Urza9814]

I was under the impression that circles are specific to you, where Facebook's groups are not. In other words, if I have a circle called 'friends', and Joe has a circle called 'friends', Joe can be in my 'friends' circle without me being in his. Plus, groups take some effort to set up and such. I suppose that's what lists are for, but you don't get group chat and such with those. But Facebook groups always struck me as something designed for actual organizations. You'd make a group for your school club, not for the guys you tend to go to parties with. I guess that's what lists are for...I don't really know though, I just went to Facebook and couldn't figure out how to create a list...I mean I did once at one time back before they started automatically creating lists for networks...and haven't been able to figure out how to delete it since...

Not to mention that there are a ton of problems with Facebook's groups. I can't tell you how many pages I've had to duplicate from groups to fan pages. I mean, for a small org (like a school club), the term 'group' sounds more like what you want than a 'page'...so people always create them as groups, then find out a group doesn't actually work (can't do an open group, for example). So then you move to a fan page. Or you start with a fan page, find out 'groups' give a ton of features that fan pages don't (group chat, documents, for example), so you switch to that...only to discover it doesn't have the features of a page that you NEED, so you have to move back...it's just a huge mess. Not to mention that even Facebook themselves seem to be confused about the purposes of these based on how often they keep shuffling around the functions, interface, and rules for them...

If Google+ can come up with a groups/pages feature that WORKS, I will be dropping Facebook ASAP.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[LateArthurDent]

Specifically, it takes me back to high school. It's fine and dandy, but half the goal of social networks is to keep networking, not to lock oneself to certain groups and isolate those groups from each other.

Then put everyone on the same circle.

A whole lot of people like to be in isolated groups, however. We're not looking to "expand our own social circles", we're just looking for a way to better communicate with our existing social circles. I pretty much created three different facebook accounts because there were three very different groups of people I hang with, and I never, absolutely NEVER wanted to post anything on one of those groups that I also wanted to post on another. None of those accounts include people I've never met in real life. Hell, they don't even include acquaintances. I've got to know them pretty well in real life, and then facebook is just a way to keep in touch.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Zugok]

I'd love a Diaspora update, too, but in the last three months I've seen precisely zero activity there.

Diapsora development is active with daily commits https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits/master.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Abreu]

Just use "public" then...

(it suddenly occurs to me... Is it possible to have one contact belong to different groups at the same time? Like some nesting Venn Diagram of interconnected circles?)

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[m50d]

Yes, that's the whole point of google+. You might have a family circle, a work circle, and a "close friends" circle, and different people could be in one, two or all of them.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Riceballsan]

The general concept of a social network isn't to mindlessly broadcast the same thing to everyone, and well 95% or more of what you have to say isn't appropriate to everyone you know (which these days everyone thinks they should be on your facebook). You come home from work, you want to complain to your friends about your boss, posting publicly you can't do that, your boss and/or co-workers are on facebook and that could come back to bite you. You think of a funny PG-13 or R rated joke, can't post that, don't want your grandma to see it, you hear news about your aunt's cancer your friends don't give a crap about that, but your family does. There is rarely 3 events in a year that are good enough to think everyone who knows you cares. I would rather have a network where when I post something it prompts and says, do you want to send this to
friends
family
co-workers
Everyone.
Before it goes out, rather then oh you didn't completely spend 2 hours fine tuning and setting up groups, I can safely assume that you want to tell everyone about it. Sure there are occasions where what you say are good to say to everyone who at least pretends to have interest in you (say a wedding, childbirth etc...) but I would imagine those are an extreme minority.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[gcnaddict]

You're right, the concept isn't to "mindlessly broadcast the same thing to everyone."

The concept is to network people together and allow for this network to replicate. How is this supposed to happen if the same people are seeing the same things? Broadcasts allow for an extended discussion by parties unfamiliar with each other, introducing people to others they might normally have never met. That's one of the points of social networking, and that's what I'm trying to say. Circles in Google+ discourage this very mentality.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Anonymous Coward]

but I often want everyone to see my thoughts

And people like you are why we hate Facebook. Is that so difficult to understand?

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Lehk228]

you can do this with facebook too, however it is clunky and inefficient

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[BonquiquiShiquavius]

Yes...you're over thinking the circles concept. Each circle is just that...a circle on your "circles page" that you can drag and drop any of your contacts into. They don't interact with each other, nor do they take away any of your contacts from the general "contact pool" once that contact has been added to a particular circle.

If you really wanted to, I'm sure you could create a Vann Diagram to show the relations between all circles, but Google doesn't do that for you.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[DerekLyons]

So if you create a group later on, you can't deny visibility of older posts to people in that group, and then you get into a complex mess of exceptions and multiple lists with different rules.

What I don't understand is why you'd want to hide older posts from newer members. Mailing lists (at least all the couple hundred I've been a member of over the years) work in exactly that way (join or be invited or added to the list and you get full access) and has never caused any problems.
 

Now with Google+ these visibility settings are not retroactive either, however until you place someone in a group that a post is visible to they cannot see any posts. They are in a limbo-like "unclassified" state, only able to see public posts. As you place them into groups, their post visibility increases. Then if you want to really get complex you can create different circles, which are much easier to target with posts than general posts with lots of visibility rules that have to be applied.

No wonder that Google is having problems... It sounds like G+ is going to be like Wave, complex and idiosyncratic - and a massive turnoff to the average user.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[dakameleon]

If you think about it, Circles is just an implementation of GMail's labels applied to contacts.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[AmElder]

I'd love a Diaspora update, too.

IANAWD, but a few weeks ago I heard Raphael Sofaer and Dan Grippi do a presentation on Diaspora. They said they're hoping for a release version by the end of the year. One reason they said they're keeping a low profile is that they don't want to worry about scaling problems at the moment. There are other problems too, such as that its a bit of a pain to set up a pod, right now. They seem like cool, smart guys. They've got bigger goals than just duplicating facebook's functionality, but I didn't take good notes during that part and can't reproduce it from memory.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Anonymous Coward]

He was talking about his contacts... not the software development.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[ianare]

The way circles are implemented is a killer feature for me. I interact with people in 3 languages, and some of them also speak several languages.

Putting them in different, non exclusive, circles allows me to filter what I post to people, for example so as not to spam English speakers with Spanish posts, but allowing those that speak English and Spanish to see posts in both languages.

At the same time I want to have people in different groups according to their relationship to me, so as not to talk about such and such cousin with my programmer buddies. Not because of privacy issues, just that they really wouldn't care about it.

Facebook does allow this type of interaction, but the interface is clumsy and hard to reach, with g+ it's all right there on any share/post.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[jadrian]

If you want to share things with just your close family members, or just close friends, or just computer scientists... how do you do it? You create the respective lists. Initial problems.
- They will see the names of the groups and how you organized them (not good for "not so close friends", "hot girls" and the like).
- How do you find which pictures you've share with just a particular group of people?

But you also want to talk back and forth with them, wall style. You can restrict your wall to just certain lists, but you only have one wall... so you need a group for each list. Problems:
- They will see the name of the groups.
- Now you want to start a particular discussion with two lists, or with one list plus one person... create new group just for that?
- You have to go to your groups to look at your discussions with that particular groups, no overall view of your discriminated stream.

It is way to messy. Circles on the other hand, are not an afterthought. All your contacts are organized in circles, you share whatever you want with a particular circle, or any group of people you define on the fly. I still think the interface needs to improve a lot, and as well as the basic concept (we need at least sub-circles). But still, even as it is, it's already way better in terms of control of information.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[jadrian]

If you want to share the same things in the same way with all of your acquaintances, by all means do it. But that's not how most people behave. To me, circles brings me back to the real world.

Facebook worked fine when it was mostly Uni students. This meant the contact list was somewhat uniform. But while in the beginning most shared pretty much anything over Facebook, I see more and more people now protecting their tagged photos, removing albums, disabling walls. They don't feel that comfortable sharing all that stuff with their aunts, their boyfriend's mother, boss. So they are using Facebook less and less. I have 15 year old cousins who have 0 interest in getting a Facebook account.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Anonymous Coward]

If I understand what he's saying correctly...

I start out with a group of friends, and everything is visible to them (otherwise I wouldn't have posted it in the first place). Now my boss wants to be "friends". I create a new group "acquaintances", and put my boss in that group. Now I can't tell the system that I don't want to see old posts, which were meant only for my friends, and not for my boss.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[auLucifer]

Google plus is about you. Mailing lists are usually about something other then you. If you're happy to let a new friend see all of your old exploits then hey, more power to you. Some people don't. I think the boss or new girlfriend examples are good because people change and mature so she doesn't need to see what you did years ago before you moved on from being an emo teen or drunk college student to having some confidence and common sense. If you can't see this causing issues unlike a mailing list of people with similar interests and goals but next to no personal information then you need to meet more people.

Personally I don't care too much about the difference except between my personal and professional life. I have a separation because I know those I have a professional relationship don't care about my sports, holidays or activities I have planned. I use linkedin and FB for this reason but if G+ makes the separation easy then I'll drop both and move to one platform.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[ydrol]

One thing I want is more control over who see's which photos I'm tagged in. (not my own photos).
I want to set visibility based on either the tagger or the owner of the photograph.

At the moment you set inclusion and exclude groups but it applies to ALL photos you are tagged in.

For example , I may go out with a rowdy bunch, and dont mind them seeing my less flattering moments, but I also want family to see more sedate photos I'm tagged in.

Facebook has taken all the fun out of getting irresponsibly drunk.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Kashgarinn]

One question regarding google+, let's say I make a group, and we post in it, then I remove "bob" from the group, write "jesus, bob's a retard isn't he?" then add him back in, will he:
a) see the message because you're allowing everyone within a group to see all messages retroactively, or
b) he won't see the message because he wasn't allowed at the time of writing to see it.

Which is it?

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[DerekLyons]

If you're happy to let a new friend see all of your old exploits then hey, more power to you.

And why wouldn't I be? Things I don't want people to know about I don't put online in the first place. My Live Journal works this way (new folks can see everything), and that has caused exactly zero problems... Because I'm careful what I talk about online. Because I have self control and common sense.
 

I think the boss or new girlfriend examples are good because people change and mature so she doesn't need to see what you did years ago before you moved on from being an emo teen or drunk college student to having some confidence and common sense.

Again, a long solved problem - you simply go back and edit/delete the problem posts. (Which, as I said above, are only a problem because you were stupid in the first place.)
 
The whole 'privacy issue' only exists with G+ because they're trying to provide complex technological tools to 'solve' a non-existent problem.

Re:"as opposed with their entire list of contacts"

[Adelwolf]

I'd love a Diaspora update, too, but in the last three months I've seen precisely zero activity there.

Diapsora development is active with daily commits https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/commits/master.

What I would love is more info and feedback for those of us who are totally behind Diaspora, but can't code worth shit.

Eat my GPL'd penis!

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 3, 29 June 2007

Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <http://fsf.org/>
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

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software and other kinds of works.

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Yes, It's Called Google+

[AddisonW]

Let me guess...you didn't bother to read the garbage article and just read the attention grabbing bullshit headline and posted?

Re:Yes, It's Called Google+

[Nadaka]

... as per tradition.

Re:Yes, It's Called Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

Eric Schmidt something like 'no one has an expectation to privacy in Google's New World' Answers the question for ya?

Re:Yes, It's Called Google+

[AngryDeuce]

Yeah, because if Google's known for one thing, it's privacy. Come on.

Re:Yes, It's Called Google+

[_Sprocket_]

Only if we're having a made-up caption contest.

Re:Yes, It's Called Google+

[walternate]

Let me guess...you didn't bother to read the garbage article and just read the attention grabbing bullshit headline and posted?

You are expecting a "social network firmly rooted in personal privacy" from a company whose leaders have publically stated that you should forget about your privacy?

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.". - Eric Schmidt, Google.

"but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it's important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities." -- Eric Schmidt, Google.

Re:Yes, It's Called Google+

[Vaphell]

if you are arguing that privacy and social network are mutually exclusive you could be right but if you are accusing google of some nefarious goals using those quotes then you are very wrong.
What they said is brutal but true. They may or may not care about your browsing habits or posts on social network, but there is a non-zero chance that the federales will show up at their doors one day with a judge/patriot act stamped warrant and they will be required by law to comply which equals to handing over some/all data on investigated individuals - there, the privacy of said persons goes out the window. How is that any different from any US based company/blog/forum? Do you think that privacy focused Diaspora would be somehow immune to federal investigators if it ever sees the light of day?
In that sense the only way to be sure that nobody ever will know is to not leave any traces online in any log which is pretty much exactly what Schmidt said.

Questions About Privacy

[AnotherAnonymousUser]

I want to ask this of the community: We regularly see stories about Facebook and I imagine we will see many more about Google+ about how there are privacy issues that affect millions of users, above and beyond the natural scope of simply sharing your information on your profile. I understand that on a social networking site, one setting/bug will be simultaneously affecting hundreds of thousands to millions of users. As someone with some programming experience, but nothing nearly as complex as this - is there something inherently really complex about how these sites are interfacing the profiles with each other that makes them harder to design the security for, insofar as a bug like this isn't a simple fix or would pop up in so many different circumstances that it would be hard to plan for? Feedback appreciated!

Re:Questions About Privacy

[wjousts]

I suspect it's not so much inherently complexity as it is the desire to make money from the supposedly "private" data. In other words, the data is private until the corporation running the social network decides they can make money from it.

Re:Questions About Privacy

[neonleonb]

I know of one such case.

Suppose you're sharing something with a circle and allowing the recipients to comment on it. Those people will likely want to know who will see their comments, so they can know what's appropriate. However, them knowing that requires exposing who you shared with. So, it's a hard decision: either you have to expose some information about sharing, or you have to force people to comment without knowing who their audience is.

I think that trying to give users the ability to create information asymmetry (i.e. not telling everyone everything) fundamentally requires tradeoffs.

Control...

[Bert64]

The problem with facebook, is that its a single site controlled by a single entity...
Google+ would just be transferring that control to Google instead of facebook...
What we need, is something open and decentralised.

Re:Control...

[Lunix Nutcase]

What we need, is something open and decentralised.

Oh you mean that Dia...whatsitname that no one gives a shit about anymore?

Re:Control...

[synapse7]

Your local espresso bar should be open and decentralized.

Re:Control...

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of issued invites, the invite system is called "who can wait the longest for a usable version?"

Plus they designed it backwards. Stupid college kids.

Re:Control...

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

You mean, like, the Internet?

Re:Control...

[Tim12s]

At least with Google+ you will be able to leave with _everything_ in your profile and upload it into that wonderful "open and decentralised" platform.

On a bright note.... Due to Google's previous blunders - with Buzz and wifi packet capture - they are having their policies audited for the next 20 years.

Is Facebook being audited for their blunders?

-Tim

Re:Control...

[AmberBlackCat]

Open, decentralized, and not designed by dorks.

Re:Control...

[TheGratefulNet]

I give less a shit about google's 'products' since we know they are not trustable.

really, given how horrible FB has turned out to be, why do we insist on trying to make a 'better' one? it can't work. any company involved will 'monetize' it and ruin it. therefore, any corp owned discussion forum (call it what you will) is crap by definition.

not giving google a chance here. why? anyone really think it will be 'so much different' from what we have today from other vendors and wannabees?

if you have a list of people you want to contact, email them. and when you want to stop, you stop. simple!

(not getting the lure of 'social networking' when I see nothing but problems with the implementations)

Re:Control...

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Yeah, but Mark Zuckerberg's a dick. Google is just greedy and monolithic. I'd much rather my digital soul be sold by Google to earn them profit than to have my digital soul continue to put profits in the pocket of someone of such douchebag status as Zuckerberg.

Besides, it's not like you have to use Google+, Facebook, or either. Competition just creates choice. It doesn't force change.

Re:Control...

[QuantumRiff]

If only there was a tool where we could all host (or serve) our own Pages.. We could link them together, almost like a web of pages. Of course, it would have to have standards, follow established protocols, and have a tool to "browse" the pages.

hmmmm

Re:Control...

[Noughmad]

If only there was a tool where we could all host (or serve) our own Pages.. We could link them together, almost like a web of pages. Of course, it would have to have standards, follow established protocols, and have a tool to "browse" the pages.

hmmmm

From http://geocities.yahoo.com/index.php

The GeoCities service is no longer available, but there's a lot more to explore on Yahoo!

Re:Control...

[SmilingBoy]

I give less a shit about google's 'products' since we know they are not trustable.

See, there's the difference between you and me - I think Google are trustable. They had a few cockups with Buzz and Streetview but were very frank about them and dealt with them swiftly. To me, these were genuine errors.

On the other hand, I don't trust Facebook. My major gripe is that they allow the owners of "applications" (quizzes and other time wasters) to access a lot of my data that I thought I had shared with my friends only. This was not obvious at all to me when I installed some applications and I was shocked when I found out - too late though. Since this continues, this seems to be part of their core strategy - share my information with people that I don't really want to have that information.

With Google, I understand how they make money: They have a lot of information on me, and can use this to target ads effectively. However, my information never leaves Google and the advertisers get none of this information. This is pretty transparent, and I am fine with it.

Re:Control...

[mcvos]

Google Wave was open, decentralized and worked quite well. Didn't take off, though.

Re:Control...

[mcvos]

There are a few advantages to Google over Facebook in this regard: Google has proven to be reasonably competent about their popular services, and Google is not desperate for cash. Of course they'll monetize it, but they're doing that already anyway. They know how to monetize stuff without ruining it, unlike Facebook.

What's clear is that...

[Anonymous Coward]

50% of this article summary is either conjecture or editorializing.

Bug #1

[0123456]

Surely giving all you personal information to Google is a privacy bug?

Re:Bug #1

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I wish I had mod points. I totally agree that Google is not going to respect my privacy.

Re:Bug #1

[geekoid]

Based on..what?
Historically, they have. Also, if you choose to leave you can export your info, and they delete you from there system, completely.

Of course if you share private information in a system people look at, then yeah, you loose privacy, but that's your OWN damn fault.

Re:Bug #1

[LateArthurDent]

I wish I had mod points. I totally agree that Google is not going to respect my privacy.

Why not? They've been pretty good about that thus far. When was the last time google shared your information with a third party?

Hell, their business model depends on keeping information about people to themselves. They don't want the advertisers to know who might be interested in their product. If they had a list, they'd advertise straight to us, and skip google as the middle-men. They want to tell the advertisers, "we know of people's habits and know people who might interested in buying from you. Pay us money and we'll display your ads to those people. In fact, let them pay you through google checkout, and we'll keep their e-mail address and credit card info from you as well, even if they become your customers.

Re:Bug #1

[dzfoo]

If you discount the governments of the world, you are right: Google never shares your data with anybody. They prefer to sell it, since it's their primary business model.

Re:Bug #1

[TheGratefulNet]

I wish I had mod points. I totally agree that $COMPANY is not going to respect my privacy.

insanity: repeating the same thing and expecting different results.

Re:Bug #1

[TheGratefulNet]

Why not? They've been pretty good about that thus far. When was the last time google shared your information with a third party?

we can't know!

you and I don't have a sniffer on their backbone trunks. we can't know what they do once we hit enter.

no idea at all. why on earth would you assume benevolence on a mega-corp? you new here?

Re:Bug #1

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like this, and still do it, for sure there's a bug. In your brain. Moron.

What A Fucking Retard

[Anonymous Coward]

What a perfect example of the complete irrelevance of Slashdot and its idiotic posters and why this site has been circling the bowl for years now.

Also....

[wjousts]

From TFA:

On other news related to Google+, Google recently announced that as of July 31, it will no longer host private Google Profiles.

Well that didn't take long. They've gone from the anti-Facebook to being exactly like Facebook in the space of about a week. Paint me not surprised.

Re:Also....

[21mhz]

Looks like you didn't have a chance to try Google+. For nearly every bit of your profile information there, you can specify how widely it can be shared. I guess they want to migrate the now redundant functionality to their new shiny service.

Re:Also....

[vlm]

Looks like you didn't have a chance to try Google+. For nearly every bit of your profile information there, you can specify how widely it can be shared. I guess they want to migrate the now redundant functionality to their new shiny service.

I also see an implication that anyone with a private google profile will be issued a G+ invite before 7/31? Or maybe G+ will be wide open to the entire public before 7/31?

Re:Also....

[scurker]

From TFA:

On other news related to Google+, Google recently announced that as of July 31, it will no longer host private Google Profiles.

Well that didn't take long. They've gone from the anti-Facebook to being exactly like Facebook in the space of about a week. Paint me not surprised.

Actually only kind of. If it were Facebook, they would make your private data public, and just not tell you. However, Google has stated that any private profiles will simply be deleted if they aren't made public by that date. While it's still not the best approach, it's still better than how Facebook has tackled any situation involving private data.

Re:Also....

[wjousts]

Except your real name and gender. Which is public, whether you like it or not after July 31.

Re:Also....

[Blakey Rat]

Doesn't that imply everybody who currently has a Google Profile will be moved to Google+ by the end of the month? That's... pretty quick moving, if true.

Re:Also....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shit, better stop the presses!

Re:Also....

[21mhz]

I'll grant you that. I guess I never had a need to present myself as a masked nobody and call it a profile. The main reason of using social networking services for me are my real-life contacts.

Re:Also....

[wjousts]

But previously you could have a profile only visible to your real-life contacts. Not everybody wants to be out there and be searchable.

Re:Also....

[wjousts]

I'll grant you that. Facebook would have made the change, made your private profile public and you wouldn't have found out about it until some alert blogger decided to raise a fuss. So I guess Google clears the very low bar set by Facebook. WTG Google!

Re:Also....

[wjousts]

Ironic coming from an AC.

Re:Also....

[John Meacham]

You can turn on/off whether you appear in searches in the privacy settings.

Re:Also....

[wjousts]

Actually, I'm not sure you can after the change over. I think that might be the point.

Re:Also....

[Confusador]

I have 2 commonly used email accounts. One of them has my name abbreviated in the email address, and has my full name and gender listed. The other takes my handle for the address, and has random data for everything else. They won't be making anything public that wasn't already.

Re:Also....

[Anonymous Coward]

> will be issued a G+ invite before 7/31?

invite: verb
invitation: noun

You needed the noun in that context.

Re:Also....

[mcvos]

Apparently verbs can now also be nouned.

Are they on Facebook payroll or what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone read TFA or the original page that it refers to as 'list of known privacy bugs'? There isn't a single privacy bug mentioned there.

Re:Are they on Facebook payroll or what?

[quickOnTheUptake]

Yeah, I went through the list and noticed one or two things that were minor privacy bugs. But whoever let facts get in front of a sensational headline?

Oh, so they're bugs when it's Google...

[Anonymous Coward]

That'll make Facebook the Microsoft of social networking to Google's Apple.

Go away idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google just rolled out the most privacy focused social network with the easiest and most powerful tools for you to control your personal information and who can and cannot access it.

Google doesn't ever sell your personal information to any third party companies like Facebook and other services.

What's that retard? Still feel like running your fucking dimwitted mouth off some more?

Re:Go away idiot.

[Lunix Nutcase]

Google doesn't ever sell your personal information to any third party companies like Facebook and other services.

Umm, you might want to actually re-read their privacy policy:

We will not collect, sell, or share personally identifying information from ad serving cookies without your explicit consent.

So, yes, they actually will sell your information with your consent. Facebook requires consent as well and you give them consent by agreeing to their TOS.

Re:Go away idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

u mad bro?

Re:Go away idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

"With explicit consent" != "agree to these terms". The former requires opt-in. Also, cookies cover maybe 1% of the personal data a social network carries.

Re:Go away idiot.

[master5o1]

And the ability to delete and edit content. Of course, that relies on assuming that they're being truthful in actually deleting/overwriting the content you posted, which they may have some obligation to do if they say that it is going to be deleted permanently.

Re:Go away idiot.

[LO0G]

If it's privacy focused, why is it that people don't get the ability to approve who adds them to their circle? There have been a number of people on G+ complaining about this already.

Re:Go away idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

We will not collect, sell, or share personally identifying information from ad serving cookies without your explicit consent.

Of course they don't need to draw it from cookies when they can just get it out of your profile. Clean out your profile?; well then it'll just be via inference from the profiles of your less privacy-conscious friends. They can also use your posting history.

Re:Go away idiot.

[hansraj]

It is my understanding that by default if someone adds you to their circle, they are merely subscribing to whatever you post as "public", i.e. for the entire internet. If you don't add them back to a circle of your own and keep posting only to a restricted circle (say "friends") then they don't get to see your posts.

If for some reason you feel obliged to add them back to your circle (maybe to not offend them or whatever), you can always make a circle called "random people" and never include that circle in anything you post.

Or did I misunderstand your concern?

you Fail It.

[Anonymous Coward]

users. BSGD/OS project somewhere culture of abuse sux0r status, *BSD may disturb other the latest Netcraft = 36440 FreeBSD

What scares me:

[drolli]

Google Circles could be the one thing which actually really works in the good way and bad way much beyond what facebook could ever do. Its scary. Combine it with your places profile, circle of friends and google searches..... Dont forget who makes android. Ich all applications on the mobile phones have integration with circles then facebook and some other may have trouble.

I pray you get hit by a bus

[Anonymous Coward]

You are just too fucking pathetic to live.

What Google+ Needs to Win

[Nom du Keyboard]

For Google+ to become a viable competitor to Facebook, they have to allow what Facebook prevents, starting with adult conversations and adult material. If not, then why jump off the USS Facebook at all since you're going to have to convince your friends to follow you anyway.

Re:What Google+ Needs to Win

[Tyr07]

You probably nailed it right on. For a service everyone is already used to, saying 'Switch to google+! We have circles, Facebook doesn't have circles. Also facebook said you're ugly, but we don't think you're ugly." Unless they're providing some incredible service more alluring to social junkies than what facebook offers, it's not going to happen unless they overcome facebook in users. It's a catch 22. To be more attractive to facebook while offering simliliar services, we need to have more users than facebook, and to have more users than facebook, we need to be more attractive than facebook.

Re:What Google+ Needs to Win

[Anonymous Coward]

it sounds like you'd be happier with ashleymadison, adultfriendfinder or okcupid.

Re:What Google+ Needs to Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Adult content is not community-building, and it quickly segregates you into the adult content ghetto.

Not Big Issues

[psydeshow]

Reading through the list of known issues, and none of them are really show-stoppers, just bad housekeeping. Stuff like, when you block someone, their existing posts stick around. That's actually expected behavior in some systems. I might block you for being crazy today, but still want to go back and read what you posted three years ago when you were sane.

Of course the biggest privacy issue of all is missing:

When using Google+, one company has unfettered access to your searches, page views, ad clicks, social graph, email, calendar, chats, documents, photos, location, and interests.

Apple and Microsoft have (theoretically) had access to all of this via your desktop OS for years, and so has the NSA (via AT&T) so maybe it's no big deal. Still, Google, like Facebook, is an advertising company. You are not the customer -- you are the product.

Re:Not Big Issues

[Urkki]

You are not the customer -- you are the product.

Nah, we're only resources, and will become products only after Google starts to make us to be more monetizable, change us to be easier to sell. To do that, Google would have to change the way we read e-mail, search and browse the web, share videos and photos... Ok, fine, we're products.

Re:Not Big Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

When using Google+, one company has unfettered access to your searches, page views, ad clicks, social graph, email, calendar, chats, documents, photos, location, and interests.

Sometimes, after extended durations sitting at the computer, I start to worry about their access to this information. Then I get up and go outside, maybe ride a bike or go climbing, and I realize it's not valuable to me at all.

Re:Not Big Issues

[DerekLyons]

Reading through the list of known issues, and none of them are really show-stoppers, just bad housekeeping. Stuff like, when you block someone, their existing posts stick around.

And interestingly enough - a problem solved by Live Journal many years ago. Maybe they should have downloaded a copy of their (open source) source code and started from there rather than trying (once again) to (badly) re-invent the wheel. It sounds like Google is headed for it's usual destination, a weak second or distant third behind everyone else.

Re:Not Big Issues

[Shihar]

Apple and Microsoft have (theoretically) had access to all of this via your desktop OS for years, and so has the NSA (via AT&T) so maybe it's no big deal. Still, Google, like Facebook, is an advertising company. You are not the customer -- you are the product

I never really understood this fear. My personal data in the hands of a reputable company really doesn't scare me. Google serving up targeted ads that I might actually like seems like a feature, not a bug. The only really 'scary' thing about personal data is when criminals get it, corporations of ill repute get it, employers get it, and when a malicious government gets it.

Criminals having this data is bad for obvious reasons. With that much data, nailing down my financial accounts and preventing a phishing attempt becomes more difficult. Phishing is hard to run on someone who isn't stupid, but weak financial security can certainly bite you in the ass.

Corporations of ill repute can spam me using my personal information. This is annoying, but it is not much of a serious concern. Most email services do a pretty solid job blocking spam. I only really worry about my poor little physical mailbox getting stuffed with annoying junk mail.

Employers or potential employers getting my data is annoying. What I do on my personal time is my own business so long as when I show up at work I do my job. If you are not public facing, it is never a good idea to let potential employers use their personal biases on how you use your free time to decide employment. Not getting a job because an employer with access to too much data decides he is just going to chuck everyone who isn't of X political party, Y religion, or has a drunk photo from college is no fun. It means that you need to tightly control what you might want to be public to a select group of people (likely your friends). This is probably the biggest problem with Facebook right now.

Governments are scary. All of the above you can pretty handily dodge and are simply nuisances. Governments can toss you in jail. Governments can make your life completely horrible. If they are nasty enough, they can do it without even the pretense of using the law (witness the US no-fly list). They can apply brutal and arbitrary laws, like tossing you in jail and giving you a criminal record for smoking pot or something equally as stupid. This is the real danger but frankly, short of refusing to participate on the intertubes in any meaningful way, you are just going to have to trust that the government isn't going to go nuts and mine that data to toss as many people as they can in jail. Your only real option is the electronic equivalent of being a hermit on a mountain.

Personally, I think that Google+ has done a pretty solid job keeping its users safe from the real described dangers. Only the government remains as a real danger, but even on that account Google has done a good job being transparent. Notice that being served good ads you might want to buy isn't on the list. If this is a problem for you, the problem is you. Personally, I like getting worthwhile ads. There is a reason why Steam has a crap-ton of my money. They serve up sales that I am interested in and I merrily give them my cash for things I want. I am pretty sure we both walk away from the deal happy.

Whether I am the 'customer' or not seems like pure semantics. Google's business is setting up voluntary two party transactions. They get cash every time they set up one of these relationships. The fact that they are voluntary implies that both parties are happy to have the relationship.

Re:Not Big Issues

[Rexdude]

Of course the biggest privacy issue of all is missing:

When using Google+, one company has unfettered access to your searches, page views, ad clicks, social graph, email, calendar, chats, documents, photos, location, and interests.

That's the Faustian bargain you already signed up for when you created a Google account. However, I'd still trust them more than say Facebook for the following reasons:
1) You can quit any time you want and export all your data (though Facebook also permits this).
2) You can block the privacy invading features with the appropriate browser extensions and hacks (face it, given that you're on Slashdot and talking about privacy, you won't find any problem rooting your Android phone and putting Droidwall on it, or similarly circumventing the problems with their desktop services)

Re:Not Big Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple and Microsoft have (theoretically) had access to all of this via your desktop OS for years, and so has the NSA (via AT&T) so maybe it's no big deal. Still, Google, like Facebook, is an advertising company. You are not the customer -- you are the product.

Since I don't use Apple products, Microsoft products or AT&T, no they haven't.

How can someone on Slashdot not realise there are alternatives to these (and ways to circumvent government internet monitoring for the paranoid).

Would this be a feature or bug?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without any kind of api access (there is still no api) these guys have pulled together a list of google+ stats (http://socialstatistics.com) that keeps track of your friends and followers. Seems innocent but it clear that google does not really monitor access to pages.

Google+ ToS

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Has anyone reviewed the Google+ Terms of Service? I'm wondering if they can just change this them on a whim. Something tells me that if Google+ were truly successful, then at some point in the future they would change the ToS to incorporate reductions in privacy. However, if the ToS were a two-way, I don't know, 'contract', where users actually have contractual rights to their information, then perhaps that would be something more interesting to those who are concerned about privacy.

Re:Google+ ToS

[Anonymous Coward]

It's considered bad form to reply to an off-topic first post with an on-topic response just so it's at the top of the page.

Re:Google+ ToS

[Anonymous Coward]

However, if the ToS were a two-way, I don't know, 'contract', where users actually have contractual rights to their information

Hahaha, you are funny, you... clearly you do not understand a fundamental law of economics: if you are not paying for a trade, you are the trade...
Basically, you'll have the right to shut up and hand over as much information as they ask for... oh, that and your first born

Re:Google+ ToS

[Anonymous Coward]

It's considered bad form to reply as an A.C. and expect a response or anyone to care.

There, FTFY.

Re:Google+ ToS

[RoFLKOPTr]

Well, he got a response, so who's the creepy loser now?

Re:Google+ ToS

[RoFLKOPTr]

Has anyone reviewed the Google+ Terms of Service? I'm wondering if they can just change this them on a whim. Something tells me that if Google+ were truly successful, then at some point in the future they would change the ToS to incorporate reductions in privacy. However, if the ToS were a two-way, I don't know, 'contract', where users actually have contractual rights to their information, then perhaps that would be something more interesting to those who are concerned about privacy.

Excerpt from Google Terms of Service:

9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

It's pretty much the same as every other social network. Facebook used to claim ownership over everything you submitted, but their ToS was modified a while ago to simply grant them license to use the content you submit as they wish. Yes, that license is irrevocable, but that's the Internet for you. You don't have to play if you don't want to.

If Google were to make changes to their Terms of Service and the Google+ Privacy Policy, they would not be able to retroactively apply that to data that was submitted before the change unless you have agreed to the changes (which basically means continuing to use the service). If you contact Google and say that you don't agree to the new terms, they would essentially have to remove your data, or at least not use it in any way that wasn't permitted by the terms at the time you submitted it.

We Get It...You're A Fucking Moron

[Anonymous Coward]

Now go the fuck away.

Fanboy Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Give the lies a rest retard.

hold on their cowboys

[Gravis Zero]

there seems to be a lot of "you cant trust them!" and "they did this on purpose!" posts on /. but let me remind you that this is a private beta. the whole point of a private beta is to work out the bugs using a small/reduced group of people so that when things go pear-shaped they aren't putting the general public at risk of huge data loss or in this case a loss of "privacy". they aren't being super private about this or trying to silence anyone, they even have a public page telling the world the problem with the site.

this shouldn't be a /. story and it only is because "everyone else is doing it"

Re:hold on their cowboys

[Anonymous Coward]

hold on their cowboys

Hold on whose cowboys? Oh, you meant to say "Hold on there, cowboys"? You forgot some punctuation (and a slight use of the Shift key), too.

Their != there != they're ...

Have a nice day!

Very funny. Privacy? Ha.

[cdrguru]

Google has one main interest: selling information. They have specific information that people pay them to push onto others (ads) and then they have other types of marketing information they can sell. Like if one day half the people in Northern Michigan are searching for electric heaters, maybe someone at an electric heater company might be interested in that fact.

Because of the nature of the information, most of this information isn't relevant to a specific person individually but applies to either non-specific people or big groups of people. So it really has very little impact on "privacy" in an individual sense.

Of course, the exceptions to this are legion. Maybe you find it deeply offensive in having web pages displaying ads to you about erectile disfunction treatments (you know, the extreme ones) when you are trying to show your boss or a client something on a web page. All because you did some searching the day before. You can act dumb and say "I wonder why that is diplayed?" but chances are, they already know. The fact that we are now seeing the interconnections between ads and searches should concern you - it clearly means your searches are on display to the world.

And of course youy can bet that as the 2012 election gets closer companies will be paying Google big bucks to see if searches for emergency food, guns, ammo and land in Montana are being searched for more than in previous months. We are giving all of this information to Google and they are making big bucks selling it to the highest bidder and doing really, really well at it.

NEWS FLASH: UNFINISHED PRODUCT UNFINISHED!

[Mike Buddha]

Duh.

Re:NEWS FLASH: UNFINISHED PRODUCT UNFINISHED!

[mgblst]

You are right, nobody should be talking about this. What a waste of a good story. Lucky we have some sarcastic dick to entertain us with his opinion such as you, to actually make this readable.

Not everything is a criticism, and you sound like somebody defending Google.

Re:NEWS FLASH: UNFINISHED PRODUCT UNFINISHED!

[Mike Buddha]

Are there any other bugs in beta products you'd like to talk about? I think it's super important to allow the peanut gallery to form uneducated opinions based on partially complete, not-available-to-the-general-public betas.

Tagged Photos

[Anonymous Coward]

In all social networking platforms, there's the tagged photos feature that doesn't have the suficient granularity to control which photos to show to all, show to a group and which to block. Just the on/off button.

Google+ Privacy Question

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I've got a question. Has anyone heard or read anything about whether or not Google tethers your search history/data with your Google+ profile once you sign up? I know Google scrapes search data based on cookies or something. I know that G-mail, Youtube, and Google Voice accounts are loosely linked (though I really don't know what that means at all). However, I haven't heard anything about whether or not G+ will use your search data to post "more relevant" ads to your profile space as you browse or anything.

I guess what I am getting at is, how likely is it that someday, somehow, people's sick porn searching habits from Google are going to end up connected to their G+ profiles in any public manner?

Re:Google+ Privacy Question

[spire3661]

If that is a concern, use a VM, use a live CD, use a LIVE USB stick, boot from another hard drive, install Deep Freeze, take a snapshot beforehand and restore, run incognito mode, Install chrome-run incognito mode-uninstall chrome, Burn your PC after, Format C:\, Thermite, Use another machine. Use another machine in combination with one of the afromentioned solutions.

Bueller??....Bueller???

Re:Google+ Privacy Question

[RJFerret]

You can simply review their Privacy Policy, which is dang respectable IMO.

G-mail and Google Voice aren't really linked, but both display your contacts. I believe they also added the ability to place a call from the gmail interface?

Anyways, I've seen no correlation of those services to YouTube at all.

This page allows you to control whether Google profile info is used to customize ads or not (accessible without Google+).

If you are paranoid about searches, simply disable cookies (or use Firefox's Private Browsing), or Scroogle.

Finally, Google has it's Dashboard, which summarizes the services you have accounts with them, with links to custom privacy policies or any that are different.

Wow, I sound all Google knowledgeable, but honestly, I just searched for their privacy policy and clicked a few links, heh, they do make it easy.

Re:Google+ Privacy Question

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Thanks! I can't access a lot of Google stuff from my day-use computer, so I had to ask rather than Google Google....um...yeah.

Anyways, thanks for the info.!

Re:Google+ Privacy Question

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I just wanted to hide my porn habits...not post the full text of the Scientology cult-manuals .... errrr .... "holy texts."

Shut The Fuck Up - Now

[Anonymous Coward]

In the decade of occasionally browsing this site you are easily the stupidest fucking person I have ever seen on this site.

Are you kdding us?

[Heddahenrik]

I still haven't seen one single reason to use Google+. None. Nada. Nichts! Net!

Google+ doesn't have a problem. It just haven't got anything for it. Get that, and we can start talking problems!

Google and Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has major issues with privacy as far as I'm concerned. Google has forwarded copies of emails I sent to a woman I was cheating on my wife with, to my wife. And not just on one occasion.

I guess the point is missed

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the people at slashdot don't understand what the point of a closed 'field test' run is all about. Its about finding these bugs and fixing them before they went live.

Facebook use to be much worst, it was all or nothing! Google has started the other way, its very nice that I can post something and I can select which friends can see it, either via groups of friends in circles or by naming them! Can't do that with facebook!

Facebook friend lists are a pain to use!!!

[Augusto]

That's why;

a) A lot of facebook users are not aware of the feature
b) Few users actually interact with them

The Friend Lists feature is badly designed from a usability standpoint. It is also pretty well hidden by facebook, and I don't mean that lists are hard to create (they're a pain compared to circle) but just the gymnastics users have to go through to use them with the padlock icon make this feature unusable to most.

It's also inconsistent on Facebook mobile. On their mobile webapp, it's not available, but on the iOS native app it is (and it's actually easier to use than the desktop app), although it's not obvious.

I've seen people dismiss circles like this before so I put it in screenshots to make the point;
http://sellmic.com/blog/2011/07/01/facebook-friend-lists-suck-when-compared-to-googleplus-circles/

MUST be open source - and here's why

[KlaymenDK]

Will anyone ever create a social network firmly rooted in personal privacy? Are the two mutually exclusive?

Yes, and no. But there are other forces at work. In fact, there are a number of such projects ongoing already, and have been for years (because they can't commit the resources for a Google-style development pace, but that's another matter).

The most important point is this:
For Facebook, and just as well for Google, the users are not the customers. The users are the product.
As long as this remains the case, you can pretty much forget everything about personal privacy -- they need access to your information in order to sell it. There. It really is that simple.

That is why it is possible for an underbrush of open source projects to build a true social network --one that respects the individual-- because for these projects, ideology trumps profit. No wait, don't go away! It's a cliché, I know, but in this case it's very very important, as I'm sure you can understand if you consider it for just a moment.

There's a solution

[wimg]

In fact, I have a solution to all their privacy problems. But maybe this time I should file for a patent first, otherwise my idea becomes Google++ ...