If you are certain that this was absolutely predictable, you are implying either:
a) The Google Buzz people are so stupid that they couldn't have predicted this absolutely predictable thing (no one else did that I know of until it bit them) or
b) they knew this would happen and chose to allow it to happen in the bad times hoping the love they'd get from those who like it would be greater than the pain experienced by those to whom it happened.
If either (a) or (b) is true, can we trust Google with our private information? Either they are too dumb to keep it out of the wrong hands or they don't care about individuals' privacy.
(b) is almost certain. I have trouble believing no one at Google thought, "I have people in my email contacts I don't want to share with on Buzz." They probably thought that these cases would be in a tiny minority, and that they could respond to complaints with pointers for how to block people.
Google had the decision to jump-start their social network in a big way at a cost of annoying maybe 1 in 100 gmail users who are conscious about this sort of thing. Seems like an obvious decision to a for-profit company.
It raises questions in my mind about what data I am providing to Google and what unforeseen ways they may decide to use that data at some future point.
What if Google just starts buying stuff for you and having it shipped to your house. You can opt-out once it arrives -- if you can figure out the RMA process...
Sane people don't make accounts to troll anti-google posts. And who said anything about excessive drama: do I really need to list the myriad reasons why one wouldn't want email to automatically "follow" exes and vice versa?
So you say that a team of engineers does not understand that most frequent contacts != those whom I wish to share my stuff with? Are edge cases like the original post hard to predict? Did they do any testing, even with their friends/colleagues?
That doesn't sound smart to me. Either their incentives are misaligned (b) or there are some other problems.
If it was a 'work' gmail account, it is quite possible that the people in their frequent contacts, are people they normally share related information with so the question didn't really come up.
Another possibility is that they assumed people would simply disable and that would solve the issue. It turned out to be an incorrect assumption.
I can attest that your first presumption is true. My girlfriend works at Google and internally it's not that big a deal to share information to your most frequent contacts, since you're generally not doing anything inappropriate or private on the internal corporate network anyway.
Generally speaking, it is difficult for useful information to flow in organizations. Most of the time, this lack of circulation is not remarkable, but this looks like a big deal to me, the sort of thing that gives PR people nightmares. I would wager that at least one Buzz engineer raised this concern weeks if not months ago but was ignored or pressured into backing down.
There are other options available. What almost certainly happened here is that Google was so concerned with getting the features right that they pushed it out without asking "What could go wrong?"
A lot of startups do that and most of the time they're fine because they can learn as their user base grows. But Google made a strategic decision to bind Buzz to Gmail and that is what caused the problem.
The lesson is that a lot of people are thoughtless when building technology but once you get to the size of Google you can no longer afford to be as lax as everyone else.
I know it was absolutely predictable because c), I predicted it. About 20 minutes into using Buzz. I posted on my Buzz, in fact, that I was waiting to see the resulting mess.
Exactly so: if you put your address and other contact information online, people will find it.
I started off agreeing with her complaint, but it suddenly struck me: she's trying to avoid an abusive ex-husband - why on Earth did she even put that information in her Google profile to start with?
I have estranged family members, which is exactly why I don't put that sort of information in online profiles, and I'm not even worrying about an abusive husband who has my email address.
How do you not see this coming with a feature like Buzz? Why didn't they do any sort of staged roll-out or opt-in for a feature with such obvious privacy implications? I'm stunned. Doesn't Google employ tons of lawyers, ethics experts, or people with enough common sense to spot this?
Maybe it was some sort of skunk-works project that got out without sufficient oversight?
Google employs a lot of smart people, so this is a real failure on their part - probably the biggest that I've yet seen from them. All previous similar addons to gmail have been opt in, so I wonder what caused them to change that policy in this case.
but it's /stupid/ to piss away the goodwill of nerds, and there is a rather large subset of the nerd population that is freakishly concerned about privacy. If you want to do business with nerds, you need to respect that.
Google, I think, did a very good job of building trust and enthusiasm with nerds; it's super important for them, we are the influencers here. Sure, nerds never click on ads, but who do you think sets up the computer for the confused normals who do?
The number of nerds I know who hate google to the point of using inferior search engines is growing over time.
Amongst others, this is one reason why I'm not an early-adopter. Too many things have odd consequences, and although this one is and pretty much always was obvious, many are not, and require devious minds and talented/persistent hackers to find them.
So, in fact, this is an opportunity to say "thank you" to the hackers out there that tinker with and attempt to break (sorry - "improve") everything as soon as they can get their hands on it. You make the world a better place.
There are clearly no longer any humans working at google, just one giant heartless inhuman machine calling the shots...
Or at least thats how Google looks to the public these days. If thats the perception they want, they got it.
I think this Buzz privacy fiasco is an historic lesson in the convergence of humanity and software and the lesson learned is that privacy of personal relationships should be a fundamental right
Not sure what the problem is. I have complete control over the privacy settings of all my accounts. After reading the post, I think the problem is the poster made a choice before this not to use the privacy features.
Google added Buzz to my account automatically and automatically added people form my contact list - some of whom I don't think should have been added - and I had to actively go and search for the privacy/remove/turn off features.
If, on the other hand, Google had said "heres our new Google Buzz feature, heres how to turn it on, heres the privacy settings and heres how you can add everyone|people you talk to regularly|manually add" then I'd be perfectly happy. Opt in is better than opt out, as far as privacy is concerned.
>Google added Buzz to my account automatically and automatically added people form my contact list.
To the best of my knowledge they prompt you and ask you who you want to follow. This was the case for me. They don't automatically follow - unless you click the OK button.
Turning off buzz is literally one click away at the bottom of the screen. I know because I used it.
Not for me. They just said "The following people have been added automatically..." At least, I did not manually add anyone and I had a bunch of people added.
Responsibility lies on you when you decide not to edit the follow users and check privacy setting when its right in front of you the first time. The only way forward is to click OK, thats what you did like everyone else who is complaining and going ra ra about privacy.
Look, people aren't making this stuff up. I'm not sure of the circumstances yet (maybe just the first batch?), but there are a lot of people who were automatically added to Buzz without a prompt.
Upon signing in to Gmail, I was directed to some sort of Buzz landing page / prompt. I deliberately chose 'no / continue what I was doing'. (I wasn't aware of any problem, so I didn't make a point of memorizing the presentation.)
Upon proceeding in to Gmail, I found that I was participating in Buzz, with IIRC 14 follows.
My more general reaction to this situation, including a similar, serious security implication for a close family member, I'll comment on elsewhere in this thread.
Briefly: You fucked up bigtime, Google. The people truly responsible for this need to be terminated.
Me too. I just logged into my gmail account (which I don't use) and got a buzz page. I deliberately did not click the huge "Okay" button but instead the tiny "Nah", but then there was still a buzz tab and I had to click the very not obvious link at the bottom to turn it off.
This is the first time I have seen the image in that page. No, I did not get that prompt.
I didn't watch the Google Buzz demo video, because I'm not interested in Buzz. I shouldn't have to watch something I'm not interested in to find out how not to take part in what I'm not interested in. It also took me quite a while to figure out where the turn off button was - since its not in the normal settings, where I would expect to find such things.
Nope - I never configured anything and had about 25 followers and was following 25 people - 2/3 of which were just people I had had to email in bursts who I didn't know. Seriously flawed execution here...
You didn't actually look at the image you posted did you. It says quite clearly that google autofollowed people. The only button that is there is an "OK". I just clicked on buzz for the first time and I got this: http://imgur.com/ji5lx
There were already messages there. They were almost all about how to turn off buzz.
The argument is not so much that you were auto followed (which only happens when you click the buzz tab on gmail) but that you didn't get a chance to do anything about it.
Clearly you have option to edit your followers list and change privacy setting (which was the complain I was referring to). If you choose not to do anything about that and ignore the prompt and go ahead click OK. Should you not take some responsibility for it? I am not denying that google auto following is not in bad form I am just pointing out that changing/editing it is extremely easy and right in front of you.
As for turning off buzz. It is at the bottom of your gmail window. One click away, but not obvious.
They switched to that when there were complaints. Lucky people like the poster of this blog entry got to be google's guinea pigs so they could figure out that they should have that screen.
Oh right, "we don't like his comment, let's get rid of it." Jesus, people, behave.
He's making his case based on his knowledge of the situation and he's doing so in an educated manner.
Me, personally, I'm in his same situation. I can't understand how people got automatically added to that Buzz thing. The link appeared in my Gmail account and I never clicked it, NEVER. I just turned it off when I learned how.
Because he's saying things which are obviously not true and could be verified as not true with a minimal amount of external research (by, for example, reading the text of the screenshot he posted).
The weird part is that of my 6 followers, 2 are people I've never heard of before. One is following 20 and the other 77 and they don't look like spammers, just complete strangers with no reason to have found and followed me.
Had the same impression, but searching my mail for their names helped. They were guys like a free software developer whom I had sent feedback about his stuff, people from newsgroups I had exchanged some unimportant e-mails with, etc.
When I set my one gmail account up it did not prompt me, all my contacts were added. However, I went to look at another account I have and it did not add the contacts from that. Not sure if it is a timing issue, as I set my first account up within 12 hours of them releasing Buzz and waited till yesterday after hearing all the complaints to see what it looked like in my other account and if I maybe missed something the first time. I think they may have either fixed the issue or are working on fixing it.
When you have HN readers complaining about this issue, then we can be fairly certain that the average user of Google's products will have a very difficult time finding their way to the "privacy features" controls, and in effect Google has already made these privacy decisions for them.
Being an HN reader doesn't make someone immune to being wrong. At some point, the user has to take responsibility. Every complaint I've read that discusses this has mentioned not using Google Profiles to modify privacy settings previously. Either that, or it wasn't mentioned at all.
So, I go back to what I was saying: did anyone using the privacy settings available have their privacy setting explicitly overridden, or was is just people not using the privacy settings available, and then getting run over when they realized what they had allowed opened?
Edit: I get downvoted for asking questions. Apparently, not following the torch-bearers blindly is frowned on.
This morning, I've watched two coworkers open their gmail accounts for the first time since Buzz went live. In both cases, they clicked "No thanks, take me to my inbox" instead of the button to "Check out Buzz", and in both cases, Buzz was enabled anyways, and a bunch of people were listed as following/followers. We looked at their profiles, and all the followers/ees were publicly listed.
What, exactly, should they have done to keep this from happening?
They were using their profile privacy settings, and it violated it, or was it more a case of the feature enabling itself in Gmail and using existing privacy settings?
Edit: And because it needs to be said here: I'm not suggesting enabling Buzz and then using existing privacy settings as a bases for how Buzz works is right. I'm just asking a question.
This was their first interaction with Buzz. There was no opportunity to set any privacy settings.
They are both Reader users, and did have limited sharing enabled there, but under what logic should those permissions ever extend to a completely new, different service with wholly different privacy concerns?
Anyways, here is my take. Buzz isn't a new product so much as it's a new feature of Gmail. It's as much a new product as any new feature of Gmail is. It's also tied into most of the areas Gmail is, and tied into the rest of Google, and uses Google Profiles.
Google made the assumption that because this wasn't so much a complete new product, but rather an extension to an existing one, that it should use existing permissions. And looking at it that way, I can easily see them doing what they did.
What they didn't suspect, or expect I'm sure, is that people would see it not as a Gmail feature, but rather as a completely different system unrelated to Gmail and rather, tacked onto it.
I can see how Google looks at Buzz as merely an extension to Gmail. Gmail is, after all, their communications tool, including email, chat, and eventually (we know this is coming), Wave. Buzz is merely another way to communicate, and because so much of Gmail already includes so many other connections, Buzz being a framework to share things that Email, Chat, and what not are effective at, they built it with a familiar way of doing things. They then assumed (and I'm assuming all of this, mind you) that because they were building on top of an existing structure, that much of the privacy concerns that have arisen were already in use by the people that were concerned with it.
So, the question is, not whether Google was right or wrong, but rather, where do we draw the line? When does a new feature become a new product that requires new permissions, and when is a feature merely a feature that can use existing permissions. After all, there is so much that they do add where we don't blink an eye or concern ourselves with permissions or privacy, despite the potential for problems down the line.
I understand what they did, and why they did it (if my assertions are correct). However, there is more to learn here than to just say "Make everything private." The reality is, most users make assumptions about privacy (this is excellent proof of that), and so do companies. I honestly don't think Google went with Buzz and said "Let's destroy users privacy." I also hope this heightens people's awareness to the state or privacy on the web.
But what if the information wasn't private before, merely public, but not in the same context? This is what I think happened with Buzz. Nothing new was made public. It's just the public things weren't really public before.
This is the question: if up until now, you had an option that set things to 'public', but they weren't really public, should a new feature unset your previous choices? Should a new feature change your privacy settings?
What are you talking about? Buzz exposes your up-till-now private email contacts by listing them on your public profile page, unless you take the time and effort to understand that it's doing so and follow the convoluted opt-out process. That's why everyone's upset.
> In both cases, they clicked "No thanks, take me to my inbox" instead of the button to "Check out Buzz", and in both cases, Buzz was enabled anyways
That's exactly what happened to me. I'm really pissed off with Google now. If they are going to throw this sort of crap at me, I will have to reconsider whether I want gmail and reader accounts.
I can confirm that this just happened to me as well. In fact, if not for this thread I wouldn't have known to go back to check if Buzz was silently enabled.
Clicking "No thanks" in this instance is not a command to disable buzz it is actually a dismissal of the tutorial page. Buzz will still be enabled either choice you make. There should be an obvious opt out of buzz on the splash screen page.
The way to turn it off is a very small textual link in the footer of the page that says turn off buzz.
Hanlon's Razor comes to mind : "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
I doubt the google programmers are stupid but I would say that they probably were excited by the new feature that they are proud of and didn't think that people would want to opt out of it before even trying it.
"But all this does is remove active links, leaving your profile still publicly available, along with any public buzzes you might have made while trying Buzz out. In fact, you're still technically following people, and they're following you. Not OK."
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 the army of group-thinkers will down-vote you (read: censor your comment) to oblivion.
We can't have two-sided conversations in HN anymore. Either you bash Buzz/Google or get the hell out of this thread.
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. =)
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.
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.
Recklessness and lack of foresight doesn't make you inhuman. If you forwarded this post back in time to the Buzz engineers, they would try to fix it before launch -- not laugh maniacally at the thought of an innocent woman fearing for her safety.
The engineers are human. I'm sure they're as horrified as you suggest.
Companies are not human, certainly not by default. The vector sum of the effort of many humans is inhuman by default. [1] (Phrases like "mob mentality", "team spirit", and "groupthink" didn't get invented for nothing.) It takes hard work to give a company a human face -- hard work by management, by PR, by customer support, by HR. Some companies are much better at such work than others.
---
[1] This is, of course, a perennial topic here on HN: It's easier to run a human company when the company has fewer people. That's one of a startup's advantages.
Of course, a company that is too small runs the risk of being too human: Humans, for example, are prone to emotional roller-coastering, can become fixated on the trees instead of seeing the forest, and need at least some sleep every day. A team's inherent "inhumanity" can help smooth out misfeatures like this.
'Similar to Facebook being willing to "piss its users off" when it feels the need to make a big change in its service for the long-term good, I see Buzz in Gmail as a relative big change that requires more than one day to adjust to. We've all been on the side of changes in services that we didn't like and either got used to or actually loved in the long run. We think Buzz is one of them. A lot of us here have also been designers on a service that we knew needed to change but was afraid to because of internal momentum or fear of short-term user reactions.'
edit: I think the quote stands on its own. They may be horrified, but the action was rooted in a kind of arrogance we often ascribe to inhuman activity, where the impact on other humans wasn't considered thoughtfully or was deliberately ignored.
Thinking about this, it seems like Google and Yahoo have been really envying what is effectively Facebook's captive audience. With Facebook, you sign up for "social networking" is essentially an undefined product whose provider has undefined obligations to you.
Email involves some explicitly or implicitly understood bounds and so doesn't let the provider sell it users to the same degree - well, unless the email provide just flagrantly violates their implicit obligations - and so the temptation is greater and greater.
Time travel would be spiffy, but how easy is it to contact the Buzz engineers now?
If you've ever dealt with Google "technical support" (even if you're a customer who shovels them buckets of cash each week) you'll find that it's nearly impossible to reach an actual human being who can help you.
Convoluted as it is, getting a blog post ranked top in Hacker News seems the easiest (only?) way to get a genuine Google issue addressed. I hope they address this one AND create an actual means of contacting the people who are supposed to be running the place.
Exactly , I'm just furious about the buzz thing, so I wanted to send a feedback email to them, but... seems like there is no one there.
Seems like a bunch of geeks with autism that fail to understand that what they do in people's mail affect them enormously, is not a game, and you should ask them. People understanding 101.
Seems like this mathematical and logical geniuses are relationships retarded.
No, they wouldn't. I'm saying this as somebody who built a product around identifying your 'inner circle' from your email patterns[1]. The part I spent the most time on was figuring out how to protect people's privacy, and these scenarios were painfully obvious even to me.
Plenty of people at Google have to have thought this through, but decided the benefits to adoption of the current process outweigh the privacy problems that will happen to some people. That's pretty evil in my book...
What are the benefits? Why couldn't they just have a lightbox appear that says, "Yay! We've invented google buzz, here's a list of people we gathered from your frequent contacts in gmail. Click the check boxes by the people you want to include in your inner circle, or click here to disable Google Buzz."
Our user generally doesn't really care about your new feature if they're logging in to check mail; they want to--wait for it--check their mail. Just like users everywhere, they're just going to click on a random button and not even be able to tell you five seconds later whether it said "Go Away" or "Reveal My Location To My Abusive Ex-Husband And All His Friends".
Neither Gmail nor Yahoo are strictly email anymore. If you believe they are are, you're living in a fantasy world. Both have chat, and yahoo even has stuff like calendar and notes. "Webmail" isn't strictly email and it hasn't been for years.
"Reveal My Location To My Abusive Ex-Husband And All His Friends"
What all of the rabid people like you fail to realize is that no information was actually revealed to anyone in this instance. It was a combination of her misunderstand and a bug in google reader that displayed follower/following lists wrong.
Of course, none of you actually care about the facts, you just want to complain.
That's the route I went (opt-in) but a large chunk of people just don't understand what on earth that means and end up inviting nobody. Defaults really matter, especially for new concepts like this.
well, of course, if they'd have done that, they wouldn't have been able to easily leverage their gmail base into some pseudo facebook competitor. They cannot meet their business needs AND your privacy needs at the same time. So.....
If all aspects of participation were opt in -- as they should be -- the problem could have been avoided. (It would help if the implications of participation were laid out up front, clearly, as well.)
And "opt in" is hardly a new concept.
This was totally preventable, through a well-worn paradigm of customer engagement.
Google has no excuse for this. They were greedy, and they screwed their customers, big time.
On the one hand, I can envision actual engineers saying, "D'oh, we should have thought of that!" And at the same time, I have a hard time imagining that if even I was aware of a lot of furor about Facebook turning on new features that remove previously assumed privacy, the people at Google whose professional interests revolve around these features weren't also aware of that furor.
The only real conclusion I can draw is that they just didn't care. Sort of "We're Google, we have vast amounts of data, and we'll do whatever the hell we please with it, and if you have a problem, talk to the hand." I've been given the Google hand to talk to before (most people using AdSense have) and this is really getting to be a problem.
And yeah, I'm a freelancer, and yeah, I sometimes use Gmail, and yeah, it's not really a Good Thing for business if my customers can see each other. I'm not in danger of being raped by any of them, mind you, but this just doesn't seem to fall under the aegis of "don't be evil".
I have never created a google profile either. Is simply clicking "turn off buzz" at the bottom of gmail sufficient to completely opt-out of all of this nonsense? ...because that's exactly what I want to do at this point.
uh, nothing that you post on anywhere outside buzz is propagated via buzz unless you ask buzz to propagate it, unless I missed something. also, buzz doesn't have access to this information unless you allow it to. it seemed that way to me when I used it.
The way the Buzz settings found my contacts and added them was perfect, because I use my gmail account frequently with my friends -- I'm right in their ideal use case.
This person didn't -- either she could not have "Okayed" Buzz at all and there would be no issue, or once she saw that it added all the wrong people she could disable her sites and then not post to it.
> But it's not too hard to remove them.
> ...
> ... once she saw that it added all the wrong people
> she could disable her sites and then not post to it.
But the point is that these require that you actively prevent Google from sharing your data, and that you realise it's doing so. That seems wrong. It shouldn't do things and then require me to notice that I didn't want them, and then work out how to disable them, and then trust that nothing went wrong in the interim period before I noticed.
EDIT: It's not me who down-voted you because I think your comment adds value. It tells us that people think these options are OK. I think you're wrong, but I think it's important that your opinion is seen as reasonable by some. Just not me.
I must say that this person strikes me as having "issues" and thus I think I'll wait for more information before passing judgement. I mean just look at rest of the blog. I look at that, and I do not think, "wow, that's a calm, reasonable person who is going to give me a fair and balanced description of what the problem is".
Only calm and reasonable people should be listened to?
Of course she's having issues. We all do. That's how it is in the real world ;) ... and some of us are extroverts, sharing our feelings with others. But it doesn't mean that if I have a message for Fred, everybody should read it ... and normal people don't know how to protect themselves, that's why this whole trend on "public by default" taken by Google and others is so worrying.
This is the point. Her messages were private until Google enabled buzz without asking, automatically followed people and let them follow her, and shared her Google Reader stuff.
It did the same to my account, I didn't even realize it until I read the article.
If you're an active user of Google Reader's social networking features who tried out Buzz, please chime in. I wonder if it really happened as automatically as it sounds, from the post, or if she missed something. (I've tried out Buzz, but haven't used Google Reader in months.)
I've been an active user of Google Reader since it went live, and I also have a Google profile. When I enabled Buzz, the only users added to my Buzz network were those already in my GReader shared network. Then I added a few others to Buzz. No problems here; no sense of an invasion of privacy whatsoever.
The rub is that I have no idea what results look like for those who don't use GReader or GProfile.
One thing that certainly is true about this: there's no simple, obvious single place to tune all your Google privacy settings. I've found how to do it, but I had to look under cushions and behind the sofa, so to speak.
You can turn Buzz off on the bottom of your gmail page and privacy settings can be found at https://www.google.com/accounts/ though I still found it awkward and unintuitive really.
I don't see any mention of Buzz in any of my Gmail accounts settings pages. Please tell me I would've had to consciously enable Buzz in order to have the option to turn it off. Please tell me Google is not automatically making my Google account a Buzz account too.
Nope, theres no mention of Buzz in the accounts setting or the gmail settings. They automatically enabled it for me and I had to hunt to find the disable link in a non-standard (for their apps) place. I'm not very happy about this, honestly.
Went to your link to see what privacy settings there were. Noticed the address they had on file was my last company's US address. Removed that, then saw that somehow the payments for that company's Google Apps account were made through MY Google account, and their credit card was still on file.
Thanks Google, for storing someone else's credit card for someone else's services on my account, for no reason I can find, other than the obvious 'I didn't realize what account I was signed in with', which seems unlikely because their Google Apps account was created before I ever started working there.
Man, Google's getting more and more confusing. It's a giant labyrinthine maze of data that only they have the time and processing power to sort through.
You can configure buzz's connection to other sites by going to gmail, buzz, "n connected sites" above the text box, click the Edit link next to (non editable!) item that says Public. A box pops open with a link to that site's privacy page.
I'd like a clarification from somebody who uses Reader / Picassa. Is any of the stuff that's suddenly available to following people actually private, in the sense of impossible to access? Or simply "obscure", i.e. if you know the username and look for it you can find it?
Wrong -- it adds the list of people you exchange email with to the list of people you follow, which is publicly visible by default. There was no way for anyone to see who you exchange email with until this happened.
The fact that you can go back and block your "following" list from public view is irrelevant -- the list of people you exchange email with should never have been put on that list without your explicit consent. It's a unilateral change in the terms of the agreement you have with Google. Letting Google publish a list of people I follow in Google Reader is consent to publish a list of people I follow in Google Reader -- it is NOT consent to publish a list of people I email or who email me.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
I think most people were already doing public sharing in Reader- it was the default there. (Not of the people, but of the items). I am not sure what exactly was happening with private sharing in Reader, but it was an option and was limited to fairly small group. I made my google reader share's public and posted them on my blog. My comments showed up in that feed.
You also would see the names of people that would comment on the items of people you were following in Reader, even if you weren't following them. So, I definitely see your point about names, but there were cases in Reader where this was already happening.
In any case, I turned on Buzz almost right away. I got to the first step and decided I needed to turn around and clean up my contacts list, I then turned it on. That could have easily been designed into the activation process.
I wish I could look poke around with the settings and give some advice on how to avoid this... but I can't even get buzz to show up with a gmail domain account. Anyone else have integration issues between domain accounts, premium accounts, and plain gmail accounts?
yes. domain accounts are considered "business" accounts and do not get any of the new features until they are proven out -- we're usually on a 4-9 month exciting feature delay.
And yet somehow for a while I had a personal account linked with my domain account, but the passwords were different... The behavior isn't that of the least surprise I've come to expect from google.
here's what's most confusing. there's a "google account", that can be any email address (including a google apps for your domain email). this is not the same as a gmail account, it's just a "google account". this type of account can use almost every service (except for gmail, and probably a few others), and it's a personal account. it's so distinct from your "business"/domain account, that it can even have different passwords.
then, you have your domain account. it can also access some services (like google apps), but these are all accessed through a special URL -- like mail.google.com/a/weebly.com, or calendar.google.com/a/weebly.com, etc. this is also a unique account which has its own password.
The worst part of all? Google's own properties handle these different types of accounts poorly. Google App Engine in particular will lock you out if you inadvertently have an administrator with a Google Account and Goodle Domain Account with the same email address.
I have a few questions - how did it find her anonymous blog? I assume it was a Blogger account? I've turned Buzz off and yet my work colleague next to me said he is getting notifications that I am 'following' him - on Buzz, Reader. It's more tricky than Twitter, because I can't 'unfollow' people. Google Buzz also found the one tweet my friend sent in 2007 and published it on Buzz as latest news. They could make privacy a little easier for the non-tech folk - ie most of the population - or there will be these sorts of knee jerk reactions.
Probably. It linked up an old Blogger account of mine that I haven't used in years. It could have been embarrassing since it was exposed to all my GMail contacts who might have enabled Buzz including people I barely know, work collages, etc. The Blogger account has a bunch of stupid stuff on it that was only intended to be viewed by friends. I'm quite sure someone could have found it by cyber stalking me but to have it shoved in their faces is entirely different. Of course I'm not even sure what other people on Buzz could see. There's no clear distinction between public & private information.
This is the problem when you give your personal data to big companies. They do what they want with it, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. They have the power, you do not. It was obvious with Facebook, now it becomes obvious with Google. But really, it should be obvious for any online service. Starting with web mail.
Honestly, Google is still allowing me to opt out at any time. They (as far as we know) use "eventual deletion," but it's still deletion. Facebook on the other hand has so far retained everything that has ever been on it, according to the interview with an employee that was on HN a few weeks ago. ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1045879 )
That said, the way Buzz was introduced was definitely a leap in the wrong direction by Google.
I completely don't understand Buzz yet. Can somebody explain why Buzz allowed that husband to read things he couldn't read before? Did it publish private conversations?
It seems like when she signed up to Buzz it auto-followed her most frequently used contacts (which included her ex-husband). As a follower he was able to read her shared google reader feeds (since those items are automatically shared via Buzz) and since she put personal info in her the comments she made to shared items, her abusive ex-husband was able to see them.
She set up a shared G-reader feed for her trusted contacts to read. Buzz auto-added her untrusted contacts.
The shared feed included sensitive info (like where she lives) and now that secret info is available to her violent and abusive ex-spouse (and all his friends.
On what grounds do you think she could file a lawsuit and have an expectation of it going anywhere? GMail is a free service for most users. You could choose not to use or it just turn off Buzz. You don't go around suing people just because you can't figure out how to set preferences. It's not like they're acting in bad faith by deliberately making it difficult to disable.
Well, first of all, whether it's free or not is pretty much irrelevant. This is a business for Google - they're taking people's personal information and using it to make billions of dollars in advertising. I don't think it would be hard to convince a jury that they have a duty to make a reasonable effort to protect the information that has been entrusted to their care.
it's common knowledge that many juries have ruled in favor of plaintiffs and defendants in lots of civil cases. No one needs to cite anything for this.
If you type "Jury trial" into bing, it #2's "in civil cases" and for that you get:
U.S. Constitution extend the rights to trial by jury
to include the right to jury trial for both criminal
and civil matters and a grand jury for serious cases
But see, I suppose there are some places where even a conversation like this could get us in jail, so maybe we shouldn't be having it... I don't know...
The right to trial by jury in a civil case is addressed by the 7th Amendment, which provides: "In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
Though there are also details that matter. Here's one:
The right to a jury trial in civil cases does not extend to the states, except when a state court is enforcing a federally created right, of which the right to trial by jury is a substantial part.
The author seems like a competent internet user. I wonder though what happens to the intersection of people with her privacy needs and the people who don't know how to login to facebook?
I've absolutely adored gmail since I got it for forwarding, spam filtering, and providing me with a permanent email address to give out to people. I'm definitely ditching it now over this and this alone. Which sucks because I will miss those great attributes, but they simply aren't worth this nonsense.
Maybe if I could have easily turned it off (or if it was opt-in, of course)...
This really demonstrates the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Whomever wrote this thing in their 20% time was likely really smart but really unwise. :-(
At first, I was thinking this came from Google intensely dogfooding their products in-house before releasing them into the wild: Within a company, you solve privacy issues simply by not sharing personal secrets. The frame of communication is professional and work-related and the mundane chatter won't get you in trouble.
But then again, I'm not sure if Eric Schmidt would happily share who he's corresponding with or following with the entire staff...
I think the point most people are missing is that the data Google shared was already public. Reader has its own privacy and sharing policies, and as far as I can tell Buzz respects these. Even if this person successfully polices Buzz, the reader feed is still out there, public and waiting to be found.
Sure, but there's a huge difference between "waiting to be found" and "pushed to the foreground".
It's just like the Facebook Newsfeed debacle. People tend to have an expectation of "how public" something is on a scale, and when that changes suddenly it can be a bit jarring. Ultimately, people adjust -- but it's a mistake to look at public/private as a binary concept. In many people's minds, it is a sliding scale.
If anything, Google should've learned from the Facebook debacle before releasing a News Feed of their own. Essentially, Google made the SAME EXACT mistakes as Facebook did.
How is it strategy when they're reverting their mistakes? Unless ofcourse screwing over a handful of people for 3 days of press buzz is considered strategy.
I'm not sure this is entirely right. I have a public profile on Google, but it didn't announce the people that I converse with on a regular basis before Buzz (at least as far as I know).
I turned off Buzz because I don't see a value in it for me, but before that I had to search to figure out how to make it so that my contacts were not made public. I was a little irate because it represented a significant portion of my client list which is more than a little bit frustrating.
That they acknowledged as a mistake, and rectified early on. When you first turned on Buzz, there would have been an option for whether or not you wanted to have your contacts displayed, however I guess it wasn't easy to find. Shortly after releasing Buzz, they made it a lot more obvious (I guess due to user complaints):
They are certainly responsive to these issues, however the fact is their approach to privacy was confusing from the start, which is a recipe for disaster.
As of about an hour or so ago, it still wasn't fixed. Clicking "No, thanks" on the first Buzz popup screen means nothing - Buzz still gets enabled, still auto-populates a big list of followers and followees, and still makes that list public.
I had the same thing happen not 10 minutes ago. I logged into a rarely used gmail account, got the Buzz landing page, clicked "no thanks" and then was redirected to my inbox. Buzz was there and active and had added followers automatically.
Voted this up because I don't recall saying 'yes' to Buzz, yet somehow I'm following people I never wanted to follow, and people are following me who are completely unfamiliar to me. And apparently I've shared some items I "shared" only due to an errant mouse-click many moons ago.
I wonder... before buzz, her ex-husband could also have followed her, probably without her ever noticing. Now that buzz generated, well, buzz, she found out about it and now can actually take mesures to block her ex.
While I see dubious value of automatically setting often mailing addresses to following (this should not have been the case, IMHO), I have a feeling that the much more visible follow-relationships right now might actually be an improvement to the older situation where you never really knew who was following whom, as right now, you actually have a chance to find out about it.
(also as a preventive measure: I'm not trying to troll. I understand her and I'm feeling bad for her, but I would really like to discuss whether this can't actually be some kind of a good thing as she at least knows that he's following her now)
You don't get to cherry-pick the scenarios. If you're going to play the cost-benefit game you have to enumerate them all, or at least all of the common ones.
(Here's just one of the many alternative scenarios: For every technically-sophisticated stalker who is unmasked by this change, I'll bet there are several technically-unsophisticated stalkers who didn't used to know how to stalk someone through Google, but who now do.)
Anyway, you can do all the sociological research you want, but that still doesn't make it right to manipulate someone else's personal toolset without their consent. You still have to ask.
The person who does get to cherry-pick scenarios -- to steer the course of his or her life in situationally-appropriate ways -- is the customer. Unless you're a Google customer, apparently, in which case the company will change the nature of its existing tools, without fair warning, to suit its own benefit.
I do also think though that the previous setup provided security by obscurity (it was hard to stalk, but it was also hard to notice being stalked), whereas the new setup is open about that fact.
Relying on your stalker not to be technically-sophisticated seems risky.
I agree on the point of not changing existing tools, though arguably, this was a change for the better (now you see that you are being stalked and how to stop it), albeit one which could have done even better (by turning all of the existing features off, then implementing buzz and then giving people the chance to opt-in again).
I'm also having a hard time understanding the issue here. Is any private data (besides social relationship data) being 'published' that wasn't available before via a simple Google search?
As I will have cause to say again: Life is not a mathematics problem. There is a world of difference between that which is theoretically possible, that which is practical, that which is routine, and that which is obvious. And the tendency to assume that these things are all the same is a huge problem in tech product design, especially social software design.
Cryptographers have a principle: security-through-obscurity is no security at all. And in the world of cryptography, that's a good principle. [1] But, alas, in the world of people who are being stalked, that principle is useless -- or, rather, it is isomorphic to in the long run you are doomed. Security-through-obscurity, and its undependable, amorphous cousins like social engineering, are all that you get, assuming that you physically exist, that you can't afford to live in an armed compound, and that you can't afford (or have no legal power) to get your stalker put in a secure prison for life.
Don't force your users to give up all the pragmatic social tools that they know best, that they've developed for themselves -- their knowledge of the natures, personalities, and social norms of the people around them -- and make them live inside a math-class story problem. Such a move can literally kill them. And they won't appreciate it even if it doesn't.
---
[1] Because cryptographers study a class of problems in which this assumption makes sense and maps well to the real-world situation.
"The person who does get to cherry-pick scenarios -- to steer the course of his or her life in situationally-appropriate ways -- is the customer."
As has been pointed out here on HN, we are not the customer. The customer is the ad buyer. We are merely the sheep, here to be regularly shorn by serving ads to us and analyzing our data and networks.
As has also been pointed out here on HN, Google doesn't treat their customers (ad buyers) very well. Given that, how well would you expect them to treat the sheep?
The ability to set privacy settings individually per contact, not just on the entire list seems to be a critical missing feature on buzz.
There are some people you don't want to follow at all, and there are some people you want to follow in private.
As a friend of mine pointed out in a recent blog post, you really don't want to make all info on all the people you follow public, especially if they're your kids: http://anwag.posterous.com/
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 286 ms ] threada) The Google Buzz people are so stupid that they couldn't have predicted this absolutely predictable thing (no one else did that I know of until it bit them) or
b) they knew this would happen and chose to allow it to happen in the bad times hoping the love they'd get from those who like it would be greater than the pain experienced by those to whom it happened.
If either (a) or (b) is true, can we trust Google with our private information? Either they are too dumb to keep it out of the wrong hands or they don't care about individuals' privacy.
Google had the decision to jump-start their social network in a big way at a cost of annoying maybe 1 in 100 gmail users who are conscious about this sort of thing. Seems like an obvious decision to a for-profit company.
It raises questions in my mind about what data I am providing to Google and what unforeseen ways they may decide to use that data at some future point.
That doesn't sound smart to me. Either their incentives are misaligned (b) or there are some other problems.
Another possibility is that they assumed people would simply disable and that would solve the issue. It turned out to be an incorrect assumption.
Generally speaking, it is difficult for useful information to flow in organizations. Most of the time, this lack of circulation is not remarkable, but this looks like a big deal to me, the sort of thing that gives PR people nightmares. I would wager that at least one Buzz engineer raised this concern weeks if not months ago but was ignored or pressured into backing down.
A lot of startups do that and most of the time they're fine because they can learn as their user base grows. But Google made a strategic decision to bind Buzz to Gmail and that is what caused the problem.
The lesson is that a lot of people are thoughtless when building technology but once you get to the size of Google you can no longer afford to be as lax as everyone else.
So yes, I'm certain that it was.
I started off agreeing with her complaint, but it suddenly struck me: she's trying to avoid an abusive ex-husband - why on Earth did she even put that information in her Google profile to start with?
I have estranged family members, which is exactly why I don't put that sort of information in online profiles, and I'm not even worrying about an abusive husband who has my email address.
Maybe it was some sort of skunk-works project that got out without sufficient oversight?
So much for do no evil...
Google, I think, did a very good job of building trust and enthusiasm with nerds; it's super important for them, we are the influencers here. Sure, nerds never click on ads, but who do you think sets up the computer for the confused normals who do?
The number of nerds I know who hate google to the point of using inferior search engines is growing over time.
I distinctly remember to have clicked in something like "I want to use buzz" before having it enabled
So, in fact, this is an opportunity to say "thank you" to the hackers out there that tinker with and attempt to break (sorry - "improve") everything as soon as they can get their hands on it. You make the world a better place.
http://savedelete.com/discover-how-to-do-use-google-buzz-and...
(posted yesterday by yogeshmankani: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118141 )
I could be wrong of course, but the post has way too many red flags to sound true.
Or at least thats how Google looks to the public these days. If thats the perception they want, they got it.
I think this Buzz privacy fiasco is an historic lesson in the convergence of humanity and software and the lesson learned is that privacy of personal relationships should be a fundamental right
If, on the other hand, Google had said "heres our new Google Buzz feature, heres how to turn it on, heres the privacy settings and heres how you can add everyone|people you talk to regularly|manually add" then I'd be perfectly happy. Opt in is better than opt out, as far as privacy is concerned.
To the best of my knowledge they prompt you and ask you who you want to follow. This was the case for me. They don't automatically follow - unless you click the OK button.
Turning off buzz is literally one click away at the bottom of the screen. I know because I used it.
This is also shown in the Google buzz demo video.
Responsibility lies on you when you decide not to edit the follow users and check privacy setting when its right in front of you the first time. The only way forward is to click OK, thats what you did like everyone else who is complaining and going ra ra about privacy.
Upon proceeding in to Gmail, I found that I was participating in Buzz, with IIRC 14 follows.
My more general reaction to this situation, including a similar, serious security implication for a close family member, I'll comment on elsewhere in this thread.
Briefly: You fucked up bigtime, Google. The people truly responsible for this need to be terminated.
I didn't watch the Google Buzz demo video, because I'm not interested in Buzz. I shouldn't have to watch something I'm not interested in to find out how not to take part in what I'm not interested in. It also took me quite a while to figure out where the turn off button was - since its not in the normal settings, where I would expect to find such things.
There were already messages there. They were almost all about how to turn off buzz.
Clearly you have option to edit your followers list and change privacy setting (which was the complain I was referring to). If you choose not to do anything about that and ignore the prompt and go ahead click OK. Should you not take some responsibility for it? I am not denying that google auto following is not in bad form I am just pointing out that changing/editing it is extremely easy and right in front of you.
As for turning off buzz. It is at the bottom of your gmail window. One click away, but not obvious.
Oh right, "we don't like his comment, let's get rid of it." Jesus, people, behave.
He's making his case based on his knowledge of the situation and he's doing so in an educated manner.
Me, personally, I'm in his same situation. I can't understand how people got automatically added to that Buzz thing. The link appeared in my Gmail account and I never clicked it, NEVER. I just turned it off when I learned how.
So, I go back to what I was saying: did anyone using the privacy settings available have their privacy setting explicitly overridden, or was is just people not using the privacy settings available, and then getting run over when they realized what they had allowed opened?
Edit: I get downvoted for asking questions. Apparently, not following the torch-bearers blindly is frowned on.
What, exactly, should they have done to keep this from happening?
Edit: And because it needs to be said here: I'm not suggesting enabling Buzz and then using existing privacy settings as a bases for how Buzz works is right. I'm just asking a question.
They are both Reader users, and did have limited sharing enabled there, but under what logic should those permissions ever extend to a completely new, different service with wholly different privacy concerns?
From this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1121034
Anyways, here is my take. Buzz isn't a new product so much as it's a new feature of Gmail. It's as much a new product as any new feature of Gmail is. It's also tied into most of the areas Gmail is, and tied into the rest of Google, and uses Google Profiles.
Google made the assumption that because this wasn't so much a complete new product, but rather an extension to an existing one, that it should use existing permissions. And looking at it that way, I can easily see them doing what they did.
What they didn't suspect, or expect I'm sure, is that people would see it not as a Gmail feature, but rather as a completely different system unrelated to Gmail and rather, tacked onto it.
I can see how Google looks at Buzz as merely an extension to Gmail. Gmail is, after all, their communications tool, including email, chat, and eventually (we know this is coming), Wave. Buzz is merely another way to communicate, and because so much of Gmail already includes so many other connections, Buzz being a framework to share things that Email, Chat, and what not are effective at, they built it with a familiar way of doing things. They then assumed (and I'm assuming all of this, mind you) that because they were building on top of an existing structure, that much of the privacy concerns that have arisen were already in use by the people that were concerned with it.
So, the question is, not whether Google was right or wrong, but rather, where do we draw the line? When does a new feature become a new product that requires new permissions, and when is a feature merely a feature that can use existing permissions. After all, there is so much that they do add where we don't blink an eye or concern ourselves with permissions or privacy, despite the potential for problems down the line.
I understand what they did, and why they did it (if my assertions are correct). However, there is more to learn here than to just say "Make everything private." The reality is, most users make assumptions about privacy (this is excellent proof of that), and so do companies. I honestly don't think Google went with Buzz and said "Let's destroy users privacy." I also hope this heightens people's awareness to the state or privacy on the web.
This is the question: if up until now, you had an option that set things to 'public', but they weren't really public, should a new feature unset your previous choices? Should a new feature change your privacy settings?
That's exactly what happened to me. I'm really pissed off with Google now. If they are going to throw this sort of crap at me, I will have to reconsider whether I want gmail and reader accounts.
The way to turn it off is a very small textual link in the footer of the page that says turn off buzz.
I doubt the google programmers are stupid but I would say that they probably were excited by the new feature that they are proud of and didn't think that people would want to opt out of it before even trying it.
(since it didn't seem to come through when the other guy posted it)
Important quote from http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10451703-2.html
"But all this does is remove active links, leaving your profile still publicly available, along with any public buzzes you might have made while trying Buzz out. In fact, you're still technically following people, and they're following you. Not OK."
We can't have two-sided conversations in HN anymore. Either you bash Buzz/Google or get the hell out of this thread.
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. =)
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-l...
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.
Companies are not human, certainly not by default. The vector sum of the effort of many humans is inhuman by default. [1] (Phrases like "mob mentality", "team spirit", and "groupthink" didn't get invented for nothing.) It takes hard work to give a company a human face -- hard work by management, by PR, by customer support, by HR. Some companies are much better at such work than others.
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[1] This is, of course, a perennial topic here on HN: It's easier to run a human company when the company has fewer people. That's one of a startup's advantages.
Of course, a company that is too small runs the risk of being too human: Humans, for example, are prone to emotional roller-coastering, can become fixated on the trees instead of seeing the forest, and need at least some sleep every day. A team's inherent "inhumanity" can help smooth out misfeatures like this.
'Similar to Facebook being willing to "piss its users off" when it feels the need to make a big change in its service for the long-term good, I see Buzz in Gmail as a relative big change that requires more than one day to adjust to. We've all been on the side of changes in services that we didn't like and either got used to or actually loved in the long run. We think Buzz is one of them. A lot of us here have also been designers on a service that we knew needed to change but was afraid to because of internal momentum or fear of short-term user reactions.'
edit: I think the quote stands on its own. They may be horrified, but the action was rooted in a kind of arrogance we often ascribe to inhuman activity, where the impact on other humans wasn't considered thoughtfully or was deliberately ignored.
Thinking about this, it seems like Google and Yahoo have been really envying what is effectively Facebook's captive audience. With Facebook, you sign up for "social networking" is essentially an undefined product whose provider has undefined obligations to you.
Email involves some explicitly or implicitly understood bounds and so doesn't let the provider sell it users to the same degree - well, unless the email provide just flagrantly violates their implicit obligations - and so the temptation is greater and greater.
If you've ever dealt with Google "technical support" (even if you're a customer who shovels them buckets of cash each week) you'll find that it's nearly impossible to reach an actual human being who can help you.
Convoluted as it is, getting a blog post ranked top in Hacker News seems the easiest (only?) way to get a genuine Google issue addressed. I hope they address this one AND create an actual means of contacting the people who are supposed to be running the place.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/a-googler-has-his-tiananmen...
Seems like a bunch of geeks with autism that fail to understand that what they do in people's mail affect them enormously, is not a game, and you should ask them. People understanding 101.
Seems like this mathematical and logical geniuses are relationships retarded.
Plenty of people at Google have to have thought this through, but decided the benefits to adoption of the current process outweigh the privacy problems that will happen to some people. That's pretty evil in my book...
[1] http://web.mailana.com/demoday/
"User! Answer this question! Now!"
Our user generally doesn't really care about your new feature if they're logging in to check mail; they want to--wait for it--check their mail. Just like users everywhere, they're just going to click on a random button and not even be able to tell you five seconds later whether it said "Go Away" or "Reveal My Location To My Abusive Ex-Husband And All His Friends".
[edit:formatting]
Neither Gmail nor Yahoo are strictly email anymore. If you believe they are are, you're living in a fantasy world. Both have chat, and yahoo even has stuff like calendar and notes. "Webmail" isn't strictly email and it hasn't been for years.
"Reveal My Location To My Abusive Ex-Husband And All His Friends"
What all of the rabid people like you fail to realize is that no information was actually revealed to anyone in this instance. It was a combination of her misunderstand and a bug in google reader that displayed follower/following lists wrong.
Of course, none of you actually care about the facts, you just want to complain.
Don't be evil, indeed.
And "opt in" is hardly a new concept.
This was totally preventable, through a well-worn paradigm of customer engagement.
Google has no excuse for this. They were greedy, and they screwed their customers, big time.
The only real conclusion I can draw is that they just didn't care. Sort of "We're Google, we have vast amounts of data, and we'll do whatever the hell we please with it, and if you have a problem, talk to the hand." I've been given the Google hand to talk to before (most people using AdSense have) and this is really getting to be a problem.
And yeah, I'm a freelancer, and yeah, I sometimes use Gmail, and yeah, it's not really a Good Thing for business if my customers can see each other. I'm not in danger of being raped by any of them, mind you, but this just doesn't seem to fall under the aegis of "don't be evil".
If anything, I'd say it makes you human.
The way the Buzz settings found my contacts and added them was perfect, because I use my gmail account frequently with my friends -- I'm right in their ideal use case.
This person didn't -- either she could not have "Okayed" Buzz at all and there would be no issue, or once she saw that it added all the wrong people she could disable her sites and then not post to it.
EDIT: It's not me who down-voted you because I think your comment adds value. It tells us that people think these options are OK. I think you're wrong, but I think it's important that your opinion is seen as reasonable by some. Just not me.
Of course she's having issues. We all do. That's how it is in the real world ;) ... and some of us are extroverts, sharing our feelings with others. But it doesn't mean that if I have a message for Fred, everybody should read it ... and normal people don't know how to protect themselves, that's why this whole trend on "public by default" taken by Google and others is so worrying.
It did the same to my account, I didn't even realize it until I read the article.
The rub is that I have no idea what results look like for those who don't use GReader or GProfile.
Seems OK with me. In fact, I kind of like it.
Only complaints I have are: 1. Missing tagging functionality (or I haven't found one) 2. No centralized 'privacy control panel'
Thanks Google, for storing someone else's credit card for someone else's services on my account, for no reason I can find, other than the obvious 'I didn't realize what account I was signed in with', which seems unlikely because their Google Apps account was created before I ever started working there.
Man, Google's getting more and more confusing. It's a giant labyrinthine maze of data that only they have the time and processing power to sort through.
Not even they have the time and processing power to sort through it.
https://www.google.com/dashboard/
The fact that you can go back and block your "following" list from public view is irrelevant -- the list of people you exchange email with should never have been put on that list without your explicit consent. It's a unilateral change in the terms of the agreement you have with Google. Letting Google publish a list of people I follow in Google Reader is consent to publish a list of people I follow in Google Reader -- it is NOT consent to publish a list of people I email or who email me.
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.
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.
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.
I should probably reinvigorate that someday.
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.
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.
Integration with Android and Picasa make things even worse: 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-...
You also would see the names of people that would comment on the items of people you were following in Reader, even if you weren't following them. So, I definitely see your point about names, but there were cases in Reader where this was already happening.
In any case, I turned on Buzz almost right away. I got to the first step and decided I needed to turn around and clean up my contacts list, I then turned it on. That could have easily been designed into the activation process.
here's what's most confusing. there's a "google account", that can be any email address (including a google apps for your domain email). this is not the same as a gmail account, it's just a "google account". this type of account can use almost every service (except for gmail, and probably a few others), and it's a personal account. it's so distinct from your "business"/domain account, that it can even have different passwords.
then, you have your domain account. it can also access some services (like google apps), but these are all accessed through a special URL -- like mail.google.com/a/weebly.com, or calendar.google.com/a/weebly.com, etc. this is also a unique account which has its own password.
long story short: super confusing
"Technology Shouldn't Give Big Brother a Head Start" Bruce Schneier http://www.schneier.com/essay-281.html
"I will offer you free web hosting, with some PHP doodads; and you get spying. For free." Eben Moglen http://www.isoc-ny.org/?p=1338
That said, the way Buzz was introduced was definitely a leap in the wrong direction by Google.
The shared feed included sensitive info (like where she lives) and now that secret info is available to her violent and abusive ex-spouse (and all his friends.
But this would be a civil case, right? There is only a Jury if its a criminal case.
EDIT: I stand corrected.
If you type "Jury trial" into bing, it #2's "in civil cases" and for that you get:
But see, I suppose there are some places where even a conversation like this could get us in jail, so maybe we shouldn't be having it... I don't know...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_trial#Civil_trial_procedur...
The right to trial by jury in a civil case is addressed by the 7th Amendment, which provides: "In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."
Though there are also details that matter. Here's one:
The right to a jury trial in civil cases does not extend to the states, except when a state court is enforcing a federally created right, of which the right to trial by jury is a substantial part.
If you don't like the faceless information harvesting machine Google is becoming, ditch their services. Otherwise, may as well just accept it.
Maybe if I could have easily turned it off (or if it was opt-in, of course)...
But then again, I'm not sure if Eric Schmidt would happily share who he's corresponding with or following with the entire staff...
Reader privacy settings can be changed at https://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=my#friends-manager-p...
It's just like the Facebook Newsfeed debacle. People tend to have an expectation of "how public" something is on a scale, and when that changes suddenly it can be a bit jarring. Ultimately, people adjust -- but it's a mistake to look at public/private as a binary concept. In many people's minds, it is a sliding scale.
I turned off Buzz because I don't see a value in it for me, but before that I had to search to figure out how to make it so that my contacts were not made public. I was a little irate because it represented a significant portion of my client list which is more than a little bit frustrating.
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/millions-of-buzz-users... (item # 1)
They are certainly responsive to these issues, however the fact is their approach to privacy was confusing from the start, which is a recipe for disaster.
While I see dubious value of automatically setting often mailing addresses to following (this should not have been the case, IMHO), I have a feeling that the much more visible follow-relationships right now might actually be an improvement to the older situation where you never really knew who was following whom, as right now, you actually have a chance to find out about it.
(also as a preventive measure: I'm not trying to troll. I understand her and I'm feeling bad for her, but I would really like to discuss whether this can't actually be some kind of a good thing as she at least knows that he's following her now)
(Here's just one of the many alternative scenarios: For every technically-sophisticated stalker who is unmasked by this change, I'll bet there are several technically-unsophisticated stalkers who didn't used to know how to stalk someone through Google, but who now do.)
Anyway, you can do all the sociological research you want, but that still doesn't make it right to manipulate someone else's personal toolset without their consent. You still have to ask. The person who does get to cherry-pick scenarios -- to steer the course of his or her life in situationally-appropriate ways -- is the customer. Unless you're a Google customer, apparently, in which case the company will change the nature of its existing tools, without fair warning, to suit its own benefit.
I do also think though that the previous setup provided security by obscurity (it was hard to stalk, but it was also hard to notice being stalked), whereas the new setup is open about that fact.
Relying on your stalker not to be technically-sophisticated seems risky.
I agree on the point of not changing existing tools, though arguably, this was a change for the better (now you see that you are being stalked and how to stop it), albeit one which could have done even better (by turning all of the existing features off, then implementing buzz and then giving people the chance to opt-in again).
Cryptographers have a principle: security-through-obscurity is no security at all. And in the world of cryptography, that's a good principle. [1] But, alas, in the world of people who are being stalked, that principle is useless -- or, rather, it is isomorphic to in the long run you are doomed. Security-through-obscurity, and its undependable, amorphous cousins like social engineering, are all that you get, assuming that you physically exist, that you can't afford to live in an armed compound, and that you can't afford (or have no legal power) to get your stalker put in a secure prison for life.
Don't force your users to give up all the pragmatic social tools that they know best, that they've developed for themselves -- their knowledge of the natures, personalities, and social norms of the people around them -- and make them live inside a math-class story problem. Such a move can literally kill them. And they won't appreciate it even if it doesn't.
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[1] Because cryptographers study a class of problems in which this assumption makes sense and maps well to the real-world situation.
As has been pointed out here on HN, we are not the customer. The customer is the ad buyer. We are merely the sheep, here to be regularly shorn by serving ads to us and analyzing our data and networks.
As has also been pointed out here on HN, Google doesn't treat their customers (ad buyers) very well. Given that, how well would you expect them to treat the sheep?
There are some people you don't want to follow at all, and there are some people you want to follow in private.
As a friend of mine pointed out in a recent blog post, you really don't want to make all info on all the people you follow public, especially if they're your kids: http://anwag.posterous.com/