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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

#241

Post by jasonlotito »

jfager wrote: post #236
jasonlotito wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Inferring privacy preferences for new software, based on prior actions in old software, is a recipe for failure." From this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1121034 Anyways, here is my take. Buzz isn't a new product so much as it's a new feature of Gmail. It's as much a new product as any new feature of Gmail is. It's also tied into most of the areas Gmail is, and tied into the rest of Google, and uses Go…

Any new feature, product, whatever that exposes private information should be opt-in. Period.

But what if the information wasn't private before, merely public, but not in the same context? This is what I think happened with Buzz. Nothing new was made public. It's just the public things weren't really public before.

This is the question: if up until now, you had an option that set things to 'public', but they weren't really public, should a new feature unset your previous choices? Should a new feature change your privacy settings?

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

#242

Post by sz »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #18

One thing that certainly is true about this: there's no simple, obvious single place to tune all your Google privacy settings. I've found how to do it, but I had to look under cushions and behind the sofa, so to speak.

Dashboard?

https://www.google.com/dashboard/

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

#243

Post by jagjit »

What got me is switching buzz off does not disable people following you - you have to individually block people. They did a similar thing with searching through emails - there was no option to disable that feature.

It is like Google is saying - "We give you free services, so now we own all your data. And just so you know, we don't do evil - so pls don't judge."

Must be funny in the rich man's world. They are wasting away shareholders' profit share in their hubris or competitive fear.

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

#244

Post by jim_lawless »

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 do not have a Google profile, but I did re-activate Buzz this evening so that I could go back in and block any followers I had.

I edited the list of people that Buzz automatically followed on my behalf and un-followed all of them.

I edited the list of apps whose status changes would be automatically Buzzed ( like Picasa ) and removed them.

Then, I deactivated Buzz again.

I suspect that I'm going to have to repeat this process periodically.

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

#245

Post by stanleydrew »

neurotech1 wrote: post #211
stanleydrew wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

buzz was internally available at Google for a few months before launch, so yes there was testing.

If it was a 'work' gmail account, it is quite possible that the people in their frequent contacts, are people they normally share related information with so the question didn't really come up. Another possibility is that they assumed people would simply disable and that would solve the issue. It turned out to be an incorrect assumption.

I can attest that your first presumption is true. My girlfriend works at Google and internally it's not that big a deal to share information to your most frequent contacts, since you're generally not doing anything inappropriate or private on the internal corporate network anyway.

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

#246

Post by joe_the_user »

ConceptDog wrote: post #130
anigbrowl wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about the relationship between her and Google, but the one between her and her ex-husband, into which google has unwittingly interposed itself.

She willingly included Google in that relationship by making him a contact and giving Google information that they had a relationship. You can't give away information and expect it not to be acted upon. Corporations are not bound by anything except for the law and the contract they form with you. If it's within their rights, they can and will act upon it.

A "contact" is someone who you email frequently. That's it. It's entry in an address book.

A user signs up for email from gmail. They don't sign up for "networking". Whatever the fine print might be, it would be clear to her and to any neutral judge that she didn't ask to have Google give her information to her contact.

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

#247

Post by piratepete »

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…

Or you could just drive around their campus on your cell phone, that seems like a good way to get an employee's attention.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/a-googler-has-his-tiananmen...

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

#248

Post by waterlesscloud »

fnid2 wrote: post #161
waterlesscloud wrote: post #2

This is the sort of thing that was absolutely predictable.

If you are certain that this was absolutely predictable, you are implying either: a) The Google Buzz people are so stupid that they couldn't have predicted this absolutely predictable thing (no one else did that I know of until it bit them) or b) they knew this would happen and chose to allow it to happen in the bad times hoping the love they'd get from those who like it would be greater than the pain experienced by…

I know it was absolutely predictable because c), I predicted it. About 20 minutes into using Buzz. I posted on my Buzz, in fact, that I was waiting to see the resulting mess.

So yes, I'm certain that it was.

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

#249

Post by raganwald »

jim_lawless wrote: post #244
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 do not have a Google profile, but I did re-activate Buzz this evening so that I could go back in and block any followers I had. I edited the list of people that Buzz automatically followed on my behalf and un-followed all of them. I edited the list of apps whose status changes would be automatically Buzzed ( like Picasa ) and removed them. Then, I deactivated Buzz again. I suspect that I'm going to have to repeat t…

So it's possible for people to follow you on Buzz even if you don't have a Google profile and you have never activated Buzz?

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

#250

Post by jfager »

jasonlotito wrote: post #241
jfager wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any new feature, product, whatever that exposes private information should be opt-in. Period.

But what if the information wasn't private before, merely public, but not in the same context? This is what I think happened with Buzz. Nothing new was made public. It's just the public things weren't really public before. This is the question: if up until now, you had an option that set things to 'public', but they weren't really public, should a new feature unset your previous choices? Should a new feature change y…

What are you talking about? Buzz exposes your up-till-now private email contacts by listing them on your public profile page, unless you take the time and effort to understand that it's doing so and follow the convoluted opt-out process. That's why everyone's upset.
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