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Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

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Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing with the fact that Google violated the principle of least astonishment here in a way that people are right to be upset about due to privacy concerns... that's what I was agreeing with on my "first hand". I just don't have any strong emotional reaction to the situation because of my binary view of sharing on the Internet. Any site feature that allows you to share something "to selected people only"…

I don't share that "binary view of sharing on the internet". I store photos "on the internet". I also store emails in Gmail. I face-tag photos with whoever is in them, for the same reasons I tag emails with whoever they relate to. This is as if Gmail were to automatically share my Gmail conversations whenever I mention someone in an email.

I've got a better one: You write a cheque to somebody, and suddenly your bank lets them see your transaction history.

There's a level of control and security one may sacrifice by doing things online, that doesn't mean the information is automatically public, and it definitely doesn't make it OK for Google to treat it in an entirely unexpected way that actually violates ordinary privacy/access control rules.

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#33
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're not being "forced" to. simply don't tag that person.

I think it is more of a managing expectations issue. Consider another situation: you pay me $25 via check. I can now debit your bank account for $100,000. Surprised? "Don't write checks." doesn't quite cover it, does it? P.S. Don't write checks.

[deleted]

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're not being "forced" to. simply don't tag that person.

I think it is more of a managing expectations issue. Consider another situation: you pay me $25 via check. I can now debit your bank account for $100,000. Surprised? "Don't write checks." doesn't quite cover it, does it? P.S. Don't write checks.

That is sure going off-topic, but - seeing that I never used checks in 30 years of my life, they are very 'popular' and common over here in Israel now.

Can you share your bad experiences? For me that stuff was never relevant and something I heard 'old people' talk about. I feel like someone invites me to a party and wants to play the gramophone for us..

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more of a managing expectations issue. Consider another situation: you pay me $25 via check. I can now debit your bank account for $100,000. Surprised? "Don't write checks." doesn't quite cover it, does it? P.S. Don't write checks.

That is sure going off-topic, but - seeing that I never used checks in 30 years of my life, they are very 'popular' and common over here in Israel now. Can you share your bad experiences? For me that stuff was never relevant and something I heard 'old people' talk about. I feel like someone invites me to a party and wants to play the gramophone for us..

"... due to an unfixable security flaw in the way funds are now transferred electronically, worldwide, it is no longer safe to write personal checks" - Donald Knuth, on reasons for no longer writing his famous reward checks. Google for more info.

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're not being "forced" to. simply don't tag that person.

I think it is more of a managing expectations issue. Consider another situation: you pay me $25 via check. I can now debit your bank account for $100,000. Surprised? "Don't write checks." doesn't quite cover it, does it? P.S. Don't write checks.

It's a learning issue. G+ is new and people don't know how it works. "I drove 1000 miles then ran out of gas stranded on the highway!!!!! Fix it!!!!!"

We could argue all day about whether it's on Google to make an out of the box friendly UX (but remember, you can't please everyone) or on the user to figure it out and make the most of it. The old Apple vs Microsoft

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, do I disagree. Tagging and visibility are two entirely separate things.

You hit the big UI problem and where Google failed. The fact that I tagged a picture has nothing to do with visibility. I added a personal note to the picture to give me more information. A simple discrete event. The fact somebody decided to add a part to the use case that now shares the photo is really bad design. Folks really need to stop themselves from making user actions have much longer reach than what the user…

One could argue that if you take a photo of someone, they ought to know that you took it of them. In fact that's an argument in support of auto-tagging. You can always untasg.

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#38
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does make some intuitive sense (even if there is confusing messaging on this). If i tag someone in a picture, then clearly they should be able to see that picture (i mean they were there when it was taken so there should be no problem with that). Extending this to the album level makes some sense because presumably everything in an album is related to a particular event (so that person who was tagged would…

Allowing someone that was tagged in a photo to see the photo is fine with me. Letting them see the entire album doesn't make a bit of sense because there's not really a good way to automatically determine if the rest of the pictures in the album are relevant to that person. While you might make an album based on events I tend to make albums based on dates. During periods where I don't take a lot of pictures I might h…

Allowing someone that was tagged in a photo to see the photo is fine with me. Letting them see the entire album doesn't make a bit of sense

How many people realize that Facebook has been doing this for a long long time?

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#39
This seems 100% reasonable to me. If somebody tags me I want to see that photo - and the entire album (since context is also important). I don't want that somebody starts taging me on some photos and then sharing these photos with others without me having chance to untag myself.

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#40
post #12

This is the behavior I expect. I don't think I'm alone in this.

My expectation would be that the specific photos I tag Person A in are automatically visible to Person A. I think this is reasonable, and other concerns come up if a person is unable to see which photos they are tagged in. Making the entire album visible to Person A, I think, is not as reasonable.

Actually, the album is very important too. The album as a whole makes a story and by tagging photos you can make up actors of that story. For example, what about if album is "actors of porn movie X" or something like (the title of album could be more innocent) and one of photos in that album has you tagged?

Regarding sharing, why would you want to tag somebody with his/her public profile without even telling him/her that?

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