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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

#101

Post by pasbesoin »

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.

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.

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

#102

Post by ahi »

pavs wrote: post #96
ahi wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 responsibi…

I don't want to change privacy settings, I just don't want buzz. Where is the "cancel" button? Google should be smart enough to not do opt-out.

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

#103

Post by jamesjyu »

tom_rath wrote: post #97
goodside wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 iss…

Actually, a friend and I were having a big discussion about Buzz, using Buzz. And, to my surprise, a few Buzz devs jumped into the conversation: http://www.google.com/buzz/tmgrone/brHidEYC3jh/I-wish-Google...

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

#104

Post by EricBurnett »

icey wrote: post #90
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 m…

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):

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.

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

#105

Post by og1 »

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.

Thank you. Although it is there I'd consider where they put that link as intentionally hiding it.

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

#106

Post by jeffmould »

pavs wrote: post #49
dkersten wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

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.

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

#107

Post by jacabado »

jamesjyu wrote: post #103
tom_rath wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 iss…

Actually, a friend and I were having a big discussion about Buzz, using Buzz. And, to my surprise, a few Buzz devs jumped into the conversation: http://www.google.com/buzz/tmgrone/brHidEYC3jh/I-wish-Google...

And then all your privacy concerns quickly disappeared!

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

#108

Post by lutorm »

pasbesoin wrote: post #89
sp332 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#109

Post by mattmcknight »

jfager wrote: post #70
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.

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 jarrin…

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.

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