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I'm trying to understand how this is a problem. Surely, it doesn't matter who is following you, as long as you don't post through Buzz. This sounds like someo

I'm trying to understand how this is a problem. Surely, it doesn't matter who is following you, as long as you don't post through Buzz. This sounds like someone complaining about wierdos following you on Twitter. Nobody is forcing you to tweet. If you don't want to publish your life to the world, then don't.

loup-vaillant 17y ago
The issue was about Google reader. The information she put there to share with friends apparently leaked. It can happen whenever privacy policies are changed, by the way.
godDLL 17y ago
She does use the social features, and the communication; albeit limited to her two closest relatives. These are all the people she ever wanted to use her e-mail, Reader sharing, and chat with. Gmail keeps track of your correspondents and automatically nominates them to be your social circle, which is way out of the scope of this girl's usage and requirements for and e-mail client. What she wanted was web-based anonymous e-mail, and Google didn't help her out there much.
- loup-vaillant 17y ago
  "web-based anonymous e-mail" can't exist. It is just too tempting for the hosting company to use your personal data without your explicit consent.
  - loup-vaillant 17y ago
    I don't understand the disagreement. Can someone explain to me why "web-based anonymous e-mail" can reliably exist ? (short of having your mail server at home, of course)
    - lmkg 17y ago
      http://www.lavabit.com http://www.lavabit.com They (claim to) use some sort of asymmetric encryption scheme such that they literally do not have access to the data on their own servers. I'd love to have a crypto expert explain to me if it's legit.
      - loup-vaillant 17y ago
        They still have to deliver your mail, unencrypted (besides TLS) through POP3. Which means that at some point, your mail is unencrypted in their machines. But they would have to be outright malicious to intercept your messages at that point, so I think we can trust them on this. Anyway, there is more than just your e-mail: there is your connection logs, the quantity of messages you receive (and from whom), retrieve (and when) and sent (and to whom). Plus, the relevant authorities could compel them to surrender your logs. You may prefer that they (have to) ask you directly. (EDIT: Vivtek says this happens very rarely, if you care do ditch the logs, so this may be a small issue.) I don't think we can get closer to truly anonymous web based mail. That may be sufficient for most people, though.
  - Vivtek 17y ago
    "not being raped" can't exist. It is just too tempting for men to rape you without your explicit consent.
    - Vivtek 17y ago
      This is kind of beating a dead horse here, but Despammed.com was my baby (still is, in an embalmed and pathetic sense) for six years. And we had Web-based anonymous email for real, written into our policy. We tossed the logs every day - the only way anybody could get fresh logs, before tossing, was to subpoena us for them. One - exactly one - law enforcement agency did that, for a user who was using us as a dropbox for credit card fraud. The Italians never managed to get us a subpoena for the freedom-of-speech abrogation they attempted. And nobody else ever tried. They'd bluster a bit, but when it came to getting us paperwork, they went away. I should probably reinvigorate that someday.
GiraffeNecktie 17y ago
I think the point is that she was operating under the understanding that she was NOT publishing to the world ... and all of a sudden, not only is she publishing to the world, it's been made retroactive and she can't block anyone stalking her. How does that not suck?
- moultano 17y ago
  That was a mistaken understanding. Reader has always published to the world unless you specified otherwise.
jfager 17y ago
When you sign up to twitter, you know what you're getting into, and you act accordingly - maybe you use an anonymous handle, maybe you only share certain things, maybe you keep your account private, etc. When you signed up for Gmail and Reader accounts, you thought you were getting email and RSS, and you acted differently than you would for a twitter account. For Google to suddenly invert those expectations is jarring and unwelcome, and to expose personal information derived from activities undertaken with particular expectations in place is a complete betrayal of trust. I still can't believe how stupid Google was about this.
- mattmcknight 17y ago
  I think the parent comment was referring to sharing items in Google Reader, which was public or only to friends (which were generated from the people I had listed Google Talk, initially for me) The parent comment missed the fact that before you were sharing links, here you are sharing the list of people you email frequently or chat with, which is an entirely different proposition and was handled poorly in a misguided attempt to imitate your twitter "following" list. Except for that oversight on the list of people you are following, the Google sharing model for items you share is much more advanced than Twitter or Facebook, and makes it easy to share things with a particular group of people.
  - jfager 17y ago
    The problem is that Buzz automatically adds email contacts as followers, and then publically displays who all of your other followers/ees are. So, if you were sharing items in Reader with a small group, once Buzz went live, you were also sharing them with everyone who was automatically added, and they could see who else you were sharing them with. Completely unacceptable. Integration with Android and Picasa make things even worse: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-10451428-256.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-10451428-256.html Plus, you can easily inadvertently expose other people's private email addresses because of their incredibly stupid ui: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/11/reply-google-buzz-exposing-email/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/11/reply-google-buzz-exposing-...

loup-vaillant 17y ago

The issue was about Google reader. The information she put there to share with friends apparently leaked. It can happen whenever privacy policies are changed, by the way.

godDLL 17y ago

She does use the social features, and the communication; albeit limited to her two closest relatives. These are all the people she ever wanted to use her e-mail, Reader sharing, and chat with. Gmail keeps track of your correspondents and automatically nominates them to be your social circle, which is way out of the scope of this girl's usage and requirements for and e-mail client. What she wanted was web-based anonymous e-mail, and Google didn't help her out there much.

loup-vaillant 17y ago
"web-based anonymous e-mail" can't exist. It is just too tempting for the hosting company to use your personal data without your explicit consent.
- loup-vaillant 17y ago
  I don't understand the disagreement. Can someone explain to me why "web-based anonymous e-mail" can reliably exist ? (short of having your mail server at home, of course)
  - lmkg 17y ago
    http://www.lavabit.com http://www.lavabit.com They (claim to) use some sort of asymmetric encryption scheme such that they literally do not have access to the data on their own servers. I'd love to have a crypto expert explain to me if it's legit.
    - loup-vaillant 17y ago
      They still have to deliver your mail, unencrypted (besides TLS) through POP3. Which means that at some point, your mail is unencrypted in their machines. But they would have to be outright malicious to intercept your messages at that point, so I think we can trust them on this. Anyway, there is more than just your e-mail: there is your connection logs, the quantity of messages you receive (and from whom), retrieve (and when) and sent (and to whom). Plus, the relevant authorities could compel them to surrender your logs. You may prefer that they (have to) ask you directly. (EDIT: Vivtek says this happens very rarely, if you care do ditch the logs, so this may be a small issue.) I don't think we can get closer to truly anonymous web based mail. That may be sufficient for most people, though.
- Vivtek 17y ago
  "not being raped" can't exist. It is just too tempting for men to rape you without your explicit consent.
  - Vivtek 17y ago
    This is kind of beating a dead horse here, but Despammed.com was my baby (still is, in an embalmed and pathetic sense) for six years. And we had Web-based anonymous email for real, written into our policy. We tossed the logs every day - the only way anybody could get fresh logs, before tossing, was to subpoena us for them. One - exactly one - law enforcement agency did that, for a user who was using us as a dropbox for credit card fraud. The Italians never managed to get us a subpoena for the freedom-of-speech abrogation they attempted. And nobody else ever tried. They'd bluster a bit, but when it came to getting us paperwork, they went away. I should probably reinvigorate that someday.

GiraffeNecktie 17y ago

I think the point is that she was operating under the understanding that she was NOT publishing to the world ... and all of a sudden, not only is she publishing to the world, it's been made retroactive and she can't block anyone stalking her. How does that not suck?

moultano 17y ago
That was a mistaken understanding. Reader has always published to the world unless you specified otherwise.

jfager 17y ago

When you sign up to twitter, you know what you're getting into, and you act accordingly - maybe you use an anonymous handle, maybe you only share certain things, maybe you keep your account private, etc. When you signed up for Gmail and Reader accounts, you thought you were getting email and RSS, and you acted differently than you would for a twitter account. For Google to suddenly invert those expectations is jarring and unwelcome, and to expose personal information derived from activities undertaken with particular expectations in place is a complete betrayal of trust. I still can't believe how stupid Google was about this.

mattmcknight 17y ago
I think the parent comment was referring to sharing items in Google Reader, which was public or only to friends (which were generated from the people I had listed Google Talk, initially for me) The parent comment missed the fact that before you were sharing links, here you are sharing the list of people you email frequently or chat with, which is an entirely different proposition and was handled poorly in a misguided attempt to imitate your twitter "following" list. Except for that oversight on the list of people you are following, the Google sharing model for items you share is much more advanced than Twitter or Facebook, and makes it easy to share things with a particular group of people.
- jfager 17y ago
  The problem is that Buzz automatically adds email contacts as followers, and then publically displays who all of your other followers/ees are. So, if you were sharing items in Reader with a small group, once Buzz went live, you were also sharing them with everyone who was automatically added, and they could see who else you were sharing them with. Completely unacceptable. Integration with Android and Picasa make things even worse: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-10451428-256.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-10451428-256.html Plus, you can easily inadvertently expose other people's private email addresses because of their incredibly stupid ui: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/11/reply-google-buzz-exposing-email/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/11/reply-google-buzz-exposing-...