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I'm not sure what the problem is either. I also have complete control over my privacy settings, but it seems you can't say that in this particular topic because

• jasonlotito 17y ago
  Here is where I think the problem lies. First, Google doesn't show your contact list. It doesn't. This was what people were suggesting, and it's not true. Basically, what is happening is the same thing that happens at twitter by default. People follow other people, and followers, NOT contacts, are shared. People can see who is following you, but they can't see your contacts. So, when someone joins Buzz, Google suggests they follow certain people, and sets them up. These are people they have in their contacts list. These people in turn have also done the same thing, most likely. Followers, like on Twitter, are shared publicly. Basically, a lot of people were following people when they really didn't want to be, and despite the ability to prevent it, they accepted the defaults. Google has made changes to make it more obvious, but from my own experience, and from everything I've read, seen, or done, is that this was all preventable. The problem was, people didn't take the time to read, or understand, what was happening, just happily clicking along. Of course, that's probably just as dangerous. Should Google have handled it differently? Yes. Did they betray users privacy? Possibly, depending on if you accept that users using software have a certain level of responsibility, or that the software is supposed to assume you don't know what you are doing. Edit: More information this morning, and I feel vindicated. =)
  • mbrubeck 17y ago
    I did some of my own experiments with a couple of throwaway accounts, before the privacy improvements on Thursday. I set up a profile on one account ahead of time. This was very easy to do; Google Reader encourages it at various places. When I logged into GMail and got the "Buzz" welcome screen, it offered "Try Buzz" and "No thanks." I clicked "No thanks" and it took me to GMail, but the Buzz UI was enabled anyways. When I logged into second account that was a contact of the first, it received a notification that the first account was following the second, with a link to the first account's profile and list of followees/followers. Now, this part is a bit foreign to many people, but imagine that the fact you email someone is a secret and potentially damaging to you. Maybe you are a whistleblower talking to a government regulator. Someone I know had a stalker added to their Buzz followers along with people she didn't want the stalker to learn about (because stalkers will try to get at their victims through their friends and family). Maybe you don't want certain people aware of your sexual orientation, or your religious or political activities. At this point, the damage is already done. Before Thursday night, there was no clear notification or way to opt-out of the public followers list until after it had been created and then broadcast to a list of people. By the time you got around to checking out Buzz, realizing that your information had been disclosed, and figuring out how to remove it, it could easily be too late. Note that Google did not "suggest" people to follow and then let users "accept" these defaults. They were added without the user's knowledge or consent. Worse, if you found the "Turn off Buzz" link in the GMail footer and clicked it before blocking your followers, changing your profile settings, etc., then all your information is still public but hidden from your GMail pages! It's then much harder either to discover the problem or to fix it. And Google has admitted to some outright bugs that made the situation worse for the "Fuck you Google" blogger. For example, people still appeared in the "Following you" list on Google Reader even after they were blocked and you set your Reader shared items to private; they couldn't actually see your shared items then but it appeared to the user that they could. Also, before Thursday there was no way to block a user who did not have a public profile. My friends who work at Google are convinced these are real problems[1]. I think you are dismissing them way too quickly. [1]: http://www.google.com/buzz/mbrubeck/HEN2DyJooNZ/This-looks-like-a-pretty-good-response-to-all-the http://www.google.com/buzz/mbrubeck/HEN2DyJooNZ/This-looks-l...
    • jasonlotito 17y ago
      Couple things here. First, I stand by what I said: People need to be aware, and made aware, of these things. Privacy is your business, and putting my privacy in the hands of someone else (and I'm not even referring to Google here) means I'm essentially giving up my privacy. Whistleblowers and other people who wished to remain secret should have taken more steps to ensure their privacy (accounts that can't be traced back to themselves). Secondly, you don't make it clear whether either account said it auto-followed things before you logged in or not. Did it? Did Account 1 follow Account 2 without actually logging in with Buzz enabled, or was it only after logging in it auto-followed? Note: I realize the implications of either way; however, I'm just curious to know which it is for my own knowledge. Again, I'd rather not assume. You also make it seem as if you accepted the default privacy settngs Google set for you. Next, I realize their were bugs in Reader that "Fuck you Google" made them aware of. Bugs happen. In this case, the bug was just a display bug and from my understanding, didn't actually share anything. In this case, the big problem was merely a display problem. Sure, this is a bug, and a serious one, but not the extent that anyone was suggesting. Finally, everything I've seen from Google, including the link you sent, suggests that they had these settings in before hand, and that the privacy concerns were more from people that didn't look into the privacy settings before hand and accepted the defaults. The link you posted even described all the issues you described by fixing them merely through making them more visible. So again, we come to it: The settings were made available. That they weren't flashing and in front of the users with big bold text with sound announcing themselves is a problem, but not to the same extent that "Google was display user's contact lists on their profile page." However, that all being said, I still think we can learn a lot by this. But looking at it through the eyes of the mob-think that occurred these past few days won't teach us anything, and if anything, only promotes continued ignorance of privacy concerns on the internet.