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

"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"

[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"

[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"

[EastCoastSurfer]

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

Bug #1

[0123456]

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

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.

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.