Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

fugitivus.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 287 posts

Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

#31

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

losvedir wrote: post #19
cookiecaper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buzz automatically adds at least Reader and Picasa streams to your Buzz account.

But it's not too hard to remove them. 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.

Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

#32

Post by jasonlotito »

rwhitman wrote: post #6

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 rig…

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.

Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

#33

Post by loup-vaillant »

illumin8 wrote: post #21

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.

Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

#34

Post by godDLL »

illumin8 wrote: post #21

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.

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.

Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

#35

Post by GiraffeNecktie »

illumin8 wrote: post #21

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.

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?

Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

#36

Post by rksprst »

Tichy wrote: post #29

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.

Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

#38

Post by loup-vaillant »

godDLL wrote: post #34
illumin8 wrote: post #21

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.

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 anonym…

"web-based anonymous e-mail" can't exist. It is just too tempting for the hosting company to use your personal data without your explicit consent.

Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

#39

Post by dkersten »

jasonlotito wrote: post #32
rwhitman wrote: post #6

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 rig…

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.

Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

#40

Post by loup-vaillant »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #38
godDLL wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anonym…

"web-based anonymous e-mail" can't exist. It is just too tempting for the hosting company to use your personal data without your explicit consent.

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)
Post reply on HN