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

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

#81

Post by shaddi »

raganwald wrote: post #79

Ask HN: I don't have a Google Profile, I said no thanks when Gmail asked me if I wanted to try Buzz, and I clicked "turn off buzz" at the bottom of gmail. Can anyone tell me if people can follow me in Buzz? Or if I'm following anybody? I have been clicking around in Google and I have no idea how to control this and I don't want to turn Buzz on by accident... Rant : The terrible thing is, I didn't give Buzz another th…

I've got the same question. Shoot me an email and I can try to follow you and report back; I'd appreciate if you did the same.

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

#82

Post by hussong »

Sukotto wrote: post #50

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...

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

#84

Post by Tawheed »

tessro wrote: post #75
EricBurnett wrote: post #51

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. Reader privacy settings can be changed at https://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=my#friends-manager-p...

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.

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

#85

Post by bozmac »

roqetman wrote: post #71
bozmac wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have to block people who are following you first

No, if you don't have a public profile, then no-one will be following you.

I didn't have a public profile but Google still automatically added people who were following me. I had to block them one-by-one.

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

#86

Post by jstraszheim »

pavs wrote: post #61
dkersten wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am pretty sure you are mistaken. This is the prompt everyone got when they went to buzz for the first time: http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/goog... 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…

You're wrong. All sorts of people were following me, and me following them, just by clicking the Buzz link.

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

#87

Post by ja27 »

dkersten wrote: post #53
pavs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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.

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

#88

Post by mechanical_fish »

pilif wrote: post #68

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…

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.

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

#89

Post by pasbesoin »

sp332 wrote: post #64
pavs wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure you are mistaken. This is the prompt everyone got when they went to buzz for the first time: http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/goog... 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…

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.

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

#90

Post by icey »

EricBurnett wrote: post #51

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. Reader privacy settings can be changed at https://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=my#friends-manager-p...

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.

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