7 ms·

Google Buzzed with Lawsuit

23 points by sgman 17y ago

elblanco 17y ago
Insular ivory tower, meet world. It's one thing to have a bug in a piece of software, it's completely another when that bug is "by design" and exposes people's personal information without their consent. This should be a lesson to other social network sites and startups that want to enter this space. "The user's personal data is sacred." Even if Google wins the suit, this is really very reputation damaging. People who don't know the details will likely only hear that "Google exposed people's private contacts to the world." I've more or less accepted Google's apology on face value, but I was thinking about this again last night, and given all the recent hubbub about the Chinese hacker break-in, and how it target specific accounts of political dissidents, this really seems like a particularly inexcusable oversight. In theory this is obviously true, and in practice we already know of a case where a woman was found by her abusive ex-husband.
- ThinkWriteMute 17y ago
  They didn't show people's personal information without their consent. Quit reposting this lie.
  - dkersten 17y ago
    Actually, they did. I just re-enabled Buzz to check and they do allow you to view another persons followers. Couple that with auto following everyones gmail contacts and its easy to find a list of my gmail contacts without me having done anything. I don't share my contacts list anywhere else and I don't really think the world has to know what other gmail users I've ever emailed (one person Buzz auto followed for me was someone I'd emailed exactly once). I count that as showing my personal information against.
    - ThinkWriteMute 17y ago
      Actually, they didn't. You need to read up on your facts. For instance here's a post that sums it up rather nicely: "No, they didn't. People think that the "want to find out more?" screen was the opt-in point, but it wasn't. The opt-in point was when you made your first Buzz post, when you were told this meant creating a public Google profile."
      - sounddust 17y ago
        Actually, many people already had a public Google profile, either on purpose or because they tested a Google product in the past (I had a public profile, and I don't ever remember doing anything to create one). For all people who already had a Google profile, the list of people they were "following" (that is, an auto-generated list based on e-mail contacts) was automatically added to their public profile with no warning whatsoever. But even for the people who didn't have one, there was no indication that if you tried out the feature, a list of people that you e-mailed frequently would be published to the public.
        carbon8 17y ago
        "For all people who already had a Google profile, the list of people they were "following".. was automatically added to their public profile" No, it isn't. Although it indeed appears to expose your contacts, it actually doesn't. This was the case on accounts I set up the first day and, out of curiosity, I tested it again a couple days ago. See my comment here for details: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127647
        pierreb 17y ago
        It does expose (by full name) any contact who comments on one of your Buzzes. It's far from being obvious when you are using Buzz for the first time that your comments will be seen not just by the Buzz author; it's also far from obvious initially for the Buzz author that his contacts will see each other if they comment. Finally, it's not clear at all who is seeing what. This all feels fuzzy and insecure as compared to good old email.
    - carbon8 17y ago
      "they do allow you to view another persons followers" If that person took the extra step of setting up their buzz profile. And although your profile might show your followers/following to you, the profile doesn't show the same information to other users. See my comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127647 It is indeed confusing and the way it's designed gives the impression that it exposed gmail contacts, but ThinkWriteMute is absolutely right and it's disturbing that he's being downvoted. "Couple that with auto following everyones gmail contacts and its easy to find a list of my gmail contacts without me having done anything." The "following" terminology seems to be the source of most of the confusion, since it makes it sound like something new is being exposed when it isn't. If you haven't set up your buzz profile, the only information your followers can see is you name, picture and chat status updates and anything else that was public, which is what they could see before when they were still just "contacts."
  - pierreb 17y ago
    They certainly did to me. They spammed my Gmail contacts with my RSS feed and Orkut profile picture without my consent; these are separate accounts and I intended to keep them separate. So Google forced my hand on that and I may forgive, but I certainly won't forget that. Similar stories abound. That some of that information is public does not mean I want Google to take advantage of my social network to broadcast it against my will; there's a clear difference here that Google does not want to recognize. This is all about dissemination control by the end user rather than Google.
    - carbon8 17y ago
      Of course, making already public information available in more places is quite a bit different than exposing private communications.
    - calcnerd256 17y ago
      So you wish you'd exercised the equivalent of a robots.txt?
  - TrevorJ 17y ago
    You are dead wrong. Sorry, but before you go around accusing people of lying you need to get your facts straight.
- Groxx 17y ago
  For clarification, as many misunderstand: though the "yes" and "no" links didn't really work as advertised (turn Buzz on / off), they displayed nothing that wasn't public already. To use Buzz, you need a public Google profile. This was true on Day 1, and it's true now. Any info that was revealed was already googleable, public information that the user filled out explicitly for a public page. edit: downvotes? What, don't like the truth? If I've got something wrong, speak up.
  - altano 17y ago
    1. Clicking yes/no at the splash screen didn't disable/enable buzz (for everyone), it just showed or didn't show the tutorial. I clicked "no" and buzz was enabled. 2. The subset of my contacts that clicked "yes" became exposed to the public. Are you claiming my address book was previously public? 3. Didn't Google make the public profile for me? I sure didn't. You make it sound like that was a steep barrier to entry to buzz?
    - carbon8 17y ago
      "The subset of my contacts that clicked "yes" became exposed to the public." Not on your profile. "Didn't Google make the public profile for me" It didn't. If you never set up a google profile or a buzz profile, Buzz displays a placeholder profile to your contacts with the sentence "This person does not have a public profile." where the name usually is. If you had a Google Profile, your contacts are shown a placeholder profile with your name and a link to your Google profile. Certainly in the latter case and maybe the former, your following/follower lists are displayed to you on your placeholder buzz profile, but these are not displayed to anyone else looking at the profile.
      - altano 17y ago
        Although I don't remember creating a profile, I wouldn't rule it out, so I'll take your word for it. This was all much less terrible than I thought. If no private data was exposed, this was mostly just an inconvenience rather than a horrible breach of privacy, which I'm glad to hear. Thanks for clarifying!
- ThinkWriteMute 17y ago
  Ok seriously, upvoting this guy? His statement and assertions are factually incorrect.
  - Groxx 17y ago
    It appears we have a troll? I've noticed a number of epic-downvote-sprees in the past couple days, where any disagreers (even with valid points) were dropped at least -2 extremely quickly.
CoryMathews 17y ago
Personally I'm glad they are getting sued. Google has the mentality that they can do whatever they want and that they are above the law. If its illegal then they will get the law changed. I used to be a huge fan of google but as time goes on their true colors seem to be coming out. They don't give a damn about anything but getting data.
- Groxx 17y ago
  How is anything here "above the law"? It's an entirely opt-in service for exposing your info, and it told you, from day 1, what was being made public. (The original notification: http://img694.imageshack.us/i/buzzflaw.jpg/ http://img694.imageshack.us/i/buzzflaw.jpg/ ) Note that it says "name, photo, people you follow, and people who follow you". Poor design != breaking the law. edit: bah, static link fail. Updated link. Original source: http://is.gd/8Fduj http://is.gd/8Fduj
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
coffee 17y ago
I remember how this very same negative attention (and threatening lawsuits) occurred when gmail was released and everyone realized that an algo would scan your email to serve ad's against it. Unfortunately, Google's pompous behavior over Buzz is cold and calculated.

23 points by sgman 17y ago

Insular ivory tower, meet world. It's one thing to have a bug in a piece of software, it's completely another when that bug is "by design" and exposes people's personal information without their consent. This should be a lesson to other social network sites and startups that want to enter this space. "The user's personal data is sacred." Even if Google wins the suit, this is really very reputation damaging. People who don't know the details will likely only hear that "Google exposed people's private contacts to the world." I've more or less accepted Google's apology on face value, but I was thinking about this again last night, and given all the recent hubbub about the Chinese hacker break-in, and how it target specific accounts of political dissidents, this really seems like a particularly inexcusable oversight. In theory this is obviously true, and in practice we already know of a case where a woman was found by her abusive ex-husband.

ThinkWriteMute 17y ago
They didn't show people's personal information without their consent. Quit reposting this lie.
- dkersten 17y ago
  Actually, they did. I just re-enabled Buzz to check and they do allow you to view another persons followers. Couple that with auto following everyones gmail contacts and its easy to find a list of my gmail contacts without me having done anything. I don't share my contacts list anywhere else and I don't really think the world has to know what other gmail users I've ever emailed (one person Buzz auto followed for me was someone I'd emailed exactly once). I count that as showing my personal information against.
  - ThinkWriteMute 17y ago
    Actually, they didn't. You need to read up on your facts. For instance here's a post that sums it up rather nicely: "No, they didn't. People think that the "want to find out more?" screen was the opt-in point, but it wasn't. The opt-in point was when you made your first Buzz post, when you were told this meant creating a public Google profile."
    - sounddust 17y ago
      Actually, many people already had a public Google profile, either on purpose or because they tested a Google product in the past (I had a public profile, and I don't ever remember doing anything to create one). For all people who already had a Google profile, the list of people they were "following" (that is, an auto-generated list based on e-mail contacts) was automatically added to their public profile with no warning whatsoever. But even for the people who didn't have one, there was no indication that if you tried out the feature, a list of people that you e-mailed frequently would be published to the public.
      - carbon8 17y ago
        "For all people who already had a Google profile, the list of people they were "following".. was automatically added to their public profile" No, it isn't. Although it indeed appears to expose your contacts, it actually doesn't. This was the case on accounts I set up the first day and, out of curiosity, I tested it again a couple days ago. See my comment here for details: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127647
        pierreb 17y ago
        It does expose (by full name) any contact who comments on one of your Buzzes. It's far from being obvious when you are using Buzz for the first time that your comments will be seen not just by the Buzz author; it's also far from obvious initially for the Buzz author that his contacts will see each other if they comment. Finally, it's not clear at all who is seeing what. This all feels fuzzy and insecure as compared to good old email.
  - carbon8 17y ago
    "they do allow you to view another persons followers" If that person took the extra step of setting up their buzz profile. And although your profile might show your followers/following to you, the profile doesn't show the same information to other users. See my comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1127647 It is indeed confusing and the way it's designed gives the impression that it exposed gmail contacts, but ThinkWriteMute is absolutely right and it's disturbing that he's being downvoted. "Couple that with auto following everyones gmail contacts and its easy to find a list of my gmail contacts without me having done anything." The "following" terminology seems to be the source of most of the confusion, since it makes it sound like something new is being exposed when it isn't. If you haven't set up your buzz profile, the only information your followers can see is you name, picture and chat status updates and anything else that was public, which is what they could see before when they were still just "contacts."
- pierreb 17y ago
  They certainly did to me. They spammed my Gmail contacts with my RSS feed and Orkut profile picture without my consent; these are separate accounts and I intended to keep them separate. So Google forced my hand on that and I may forgive, but I certainly won't forget that. Similar stories abound. That some of that information is public does not mean I want Google to take advantage of my social network to broadcast it against my will; there's a clear difference here that Google does not want to recognize. This is all about dissemination control by the end user rather than Google.
  - carbon8 17y ago
    Of course, making already public information available in more places is quite a bit different than exposing private communications.
  - calcnerd256 17y ago
    So you wish you'd exercised the equivalent of a robots.txt?
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  You are dead wrong. Sorry, but before you go around accusing people of lying you need to get your facts straight.
Groxx 17y ago
For clarification, as many misunderstand: though the "yes" and "no" links didn't really work as advertised (turn Buzz on / off), they displayed nothing that wasn't public already. To use Buzz, you need a public Google profile. This was true on Day 1, and it's true now. Any info that was revealed was already googleable, public information that the user filled out explicitly for a public page. edit: downvotes? What, don't like the truth? If I've got something wrong, speak up.
- altano 17y ago
  1. Clicking yes/no at the splash screen didn't disable/enable buzz (for everyone), it just showed or didn't show the tutorial. I clicked "no" and buzz was enabled. 2. The subset of my contacts that clicked "yes" became exposed to the public. Are you claiming my address book was previously public? 3. Didn't Google make the public profile for me? I sure didn't. You make it sound like that was a steep barrier to entry to buzz?
  - carbon8 17y ago
    "The subset of my contacts that clicked "yes" became exposed to the public." Not on your profile. "Didn't Google make the public profile for me" It didn't. If you never set up a google profile or a buzz profile, Buzz displays a placeholder profile to your contacts with the sentence "This person does not have a public profile." where the name usually is. If you had a Google Profile, your contacts are shown a placeholder profile with your name and a link to your Google profile. Certainly in the latter case and maybe the former, your following/follower lists are displayed to you on your placeholder buzz profile, but these are not displayed to anyone else looking at the profile.
    - altano 17y ago
      Although I don't remember creating a profile, I wouldn't rule it out, so I'll take your word for it. This was all much less terrible than I thought. If no private data was exposed, this was mostly just an inconvenience rather than a horrible breach of privacy, which I'm glad to hear. Thanks for clarifying!
ThinkWriteMute 17y ago
Ok seriously, upvoting this guy? His statement and assertions are factually incorrect.
- Groxx 17y ago
  It appears we have a troll? I've noticed a number of epic-downvote-sprees in the past couple days, where any disagreers (even with valid points) were dropped at least -2 extremely quickly.

CoryMathews 17y ago

Personally I'm glad they are getting sued. Google has the mentality that they can do whatever they want and that they are above the law. If its illegal then they will get the law changed. I used to be a huge fan of google but as time goes on their true colors seem to be coming out. They don't give a damn about anything but getting data.

Groxx 17y ago
How is anything here "above the law"? It's an entirely opt-in service for exposing your info, and it told you, from day 1, what was being made public. (The original notification: http://img694.imageshack.us/i/buzzflaw.jpg/ http://img694.imageshack.us/i/buzzflaw.jpg/ ) Note that it says "name, photo, people you follow, and people who follow you". Poor design != breaking the law. edit: bah, static link fail. Updated link. Original source: http://is.gd/8Fduj http://is.gd/8Fduj

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

coffee 17y ago

I remember how this very same negative attention (and threatening lawsuits) occurred when gmail was released and everyone realized that an algo would scan your email to serve ad's against it. Unfortunately, Google's pompous behavior over Buzz is cold and calculated.