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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

#91

Post by pilif »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #88
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 n…

Thanks. I see.

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).

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

#92

Post by jsz0 »

monkeygrinder wrote: post #26

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 priva…

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.

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

#93

Post by ahi »

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 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.

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

#94

Post by mechanical_fish »

goodside wrote: post #74
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…

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.

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

#95

Post by berglund »

The (false) assumption is that a person has inherent privacy both on the internets and in the carbon based world. A very quick look at your local property appraisers office or clerk of courts should show you that the individual must be vigilant in protecting this right.

I don't trust google anymore than I trust any individual I don't know. I am using their service, and I know that they can give up all me emails, on purpose or by accident, and I have to be aware of what I send over that service. Clearly google has done a foolish thing here, but based on the above, not one that should have been unexpected.

Such is the state of modern life. You can always shut it off.

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

#96

Post by pavs »

ahi wrote: post #93
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…

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.

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

#97

Post by tom_rath »

goodside wrote: post #74
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…

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.

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.

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

#98

Post by snorkel »

dkersten wrote: post #57
DTrejo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is it?

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.

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

#99

Post by pasbesoin »

Amen.

A close family member has spent the past decade going to sometimes extreme measures to avoid an abusive ex-spouse.

Google has potentially pre-emptively revealed their contact information; and not through their own choices and/or lack of action (on zero notice, spending perhaps hours wandering through a plenitude of scattered and poorly documented Buzz settings and behaviors -- please!). No: Any email contact who uses Gmail is now a potential point of exposure for them.

ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE.

Stupidity can aid and abet evil, Google. If you are not purposefully evil, you are aiding and abetting it.

My trust is gone. It's not coming back.

If you want any measure of damage control, you will determine who was actually responsible for this. And everyone in a position of responsibility for this product who did not understand or chose not to heed these concerns. And you will terminate them. Anything less, and we can do no more than expect similar bad decisions -- from those same people -- in the future.

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

#100

Post by petewarden »

goodside wrote: post #74
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…

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.

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...

[1] http://web.mailana.com/demoday/

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