4 ms·

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 enab

by 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!
- altano 17y ago
  So turns out you're totally wrong. I just went to the settings page to kill Buzz completely now that they've added the ability, and the default option is worded as such: "Show the list of people I'm following and the list of people following me on my public Google profile Learn more" So that list of followers (people who simply didn't read the splash page and blindly picked "yes") WERE exposed to the public.
Groxx 17y ago
I completely agree with 1 (which I'd mentioned in my initial comment). I thought it meant enable / don't enable too, at first, and was extremely disappointed when this turned out to not be the case. I wouldn't have minded the auto-enable setup if they hadn't made it so hard to actually disable it, and if they had an "opt-out" link like we thought they had. They've effectively addressed this by having a simple completely disabling link now, but I still don't like how it requires deleting your public profile. What if I have a public Picasaweb page? I'll admit, I pulled a tl;dr on the welcome screen; I typically do, welcome screens are rarely worth more than a quick scan. Expecting the "no thanks" link to refer to buzz is pretty much my mistake, though it could've been clearer. edit: and as others have addressed (carbon8 this time), 2 and 3 are still incorrect, even from the beginning.

by altano 17y ago

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!
altano 17y ago
So turns out you're totally wrong. I just went to the settings page to kill Buzz completely now that they've added the ability, and the default option is worded as such: "Show the list of people I'm following and the list of people following me on my public Google profile Learn more" So that list of followers (people who simply didn't read the splash page and blindly picked "yes") WERE exposed to the public.

Groxx 17y ago

I completely agree with 1 (which I'd mentioned in my initial comment). I thought it meant enable / don't enable too, at first, and was extremely disappointed when this turned out to not be the case. I wouldn't have minded the auto-enable setup if they hadn't made it so hard to actually disable it, and if they had an "opt-out" link like we thought they had. They've effectively addressed this by having a simple completely disabling link now, but I still don't like how it requires deleting your public profile. What if I have a public Picasaweb page? I'll admit, I pulled a tl;dr on the welcome screen; I typically do, welcome screens are rarely worth more than a quick scan. Expecting the "no thanks" link to refer to buzz is pretty much my mistake, though it could've been clearer. edit: and as others have addressed (carbon8 this time), 2 and 3 are still incorrect, even from the beginning.