There needs to be a "make them person stop following me" option so I don't feel like such a dick when I block people. What's so wrong about that option? Also, why can't I block/force someone to stop following me if they don't have a google profile? What?
Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
251–260 of 287 posts
Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
#252It was ridiculously arrogant to just force-configure a network on users like that. Thinking of dumping my Gmail account.
Thinking about it won't solve anything, because if you just think about it you won't do it. If you don't like the faceless information harvesting machine Google is becoming, ditch their services. Otherwise, may as well just accept it.
I've absolutely adored gmail since I got it for forwarding, spam filtering, and providing me with a permanent email address to give out to people. I'm definitely ditching it now over this and this alone. Which sucks because I will miss those great attributes, but they simply aren't worth this nonsense.
Maybe if I could have easily turned it off (or if it was opt-in, of course)...
Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Where does my contact list appear on my profile page? I can't find it. I can find my followers, but they aren't the same as my contacts.
Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Well, yes, but it's also meaningless: if you're not using buzz, there's nothing to follow. It's like they added you to a chat contacts list, when you never sign in to chat.
Oh wait, that's exactly what it is like, because they did the exact same thing with the launch of GChat: pre-populated social graph. No outrage then about people being able to listen to the sound of silence.
Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
#255Well, Google followed up on it and she wrote another post about that. http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/screw-you-google/
Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I set up a fake account for testing and tried to search for myself using my various email addresses. They don't seem to exist. So right now I think that setting up a Profile is the key. Once you set that up, Buzz can start sharing your information and you would have to fool around with privacy settings to shut that down. I hope I'm mistaken about this, it would seriously suck http://rot13.com/index.php?text=fhpx%20tb…
I turned on buzz for one of my Gmail accounts, for which I had already set up a profile. I then saw I had one person following me. Someone I know.
But I did not see any indication that any of my contacts were auto-following me, or me them.
On another Gmail account, for which I have no profile, I signed in and was greeted with the Try out buzz? splash thing. I clicked "No thanks."
I get to my mail page, and there's the buzz icon right under Inbox. That's a real WTF moment. I clicked the Buzz icon, and it appears no different than on my other account (except here I was not following anyone, and no one was following me). So, I have no idea what that initial splash page was for.
However, back in my main Gmail account, I used Buzz to search for that other account. Not found. But I have no idea what that really means. Is it not found because there is no profile? Not found because I didn't really opt in?
Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
(b) is almost certain. I have trouble believing no one at Google thought, "I have people in my email contacts I don't want to share with on Buzz." They probably thought that these cases would be in a tiny minority, and that they could respond to complaints with pointers for how to block people.
You're probably right but what would make them think this would be a tiny minority? Have these engineers never had ex-girlfriends?
Sane people don't have excessive drama with their exes.
Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are the benefits? Why couldn't they just have a lightbox appear that says, "Yay! We've invented google buzz, here's a list of people we gathered from your frequent contacts in gmail. Click the check boxes by the people you want to include in your inner circle, or click here to disable Google Buzz."
The lightbox: the new modal dialog. "User! Answer this question! Now!" Our user generally doesn't really care about your new feature if they're logging in to check mail; they want to--wait for it-- check their mail . Just like users everywhere, they're just going to click on a random button and not even be able to tell you five seconds later whether it said "Go Away" or "Reveal My Location To My Abusive Ex-Husband An…
"they want to--wait for it--check their mail"
Neither Gmail nor Yahoo are strictly email anymore. If you believe they are are, you're living in a fantasy world. Both have chat, and yahoo even has stuff like calendar and notes. "Webmail" isn't strictly email and it hasn't been for years.
"Reveal My Location To My Abusive Ex-Husband And All His Friends"
What all of the rabid people like you fail to realize is that no information was actually revealed to anyone in this instance. It was a combination of her misunderstand and a bug in google reader that displayed follower/following lists wrong.
Of course, none of you actually care about the facts, you just want to complain.
Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
#259Hopefully Google is following some of these complaints. Personally, I'm adding feedback on their "disabling Buzz" help page: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...
They're doing serious damage to their image with this. I hope they wake up soon.
Re: Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It sounds like there are two issues here. First, that Google assumed that because they were 'frequent contacts' that they were best friends, and thus him and all his jackass friends were made followers on her Google Reader. The second is that all the people that frequently contact HER (via an anonymous account which forwards to her Google account) now have her personal Gmail account and are following her on Buzz (and…
> The second is that all the people that frequently contact
> HER (via an anonymous account which forwards to her Google
> account) now have her personal Gmail account and are
> following her on Buzz (and Google Reader), which she can't
> stop from happening.
Until now, hiding your mail address from spam was one of the biggest concerns one had with email. Now, that might turn into hiding from Google. Or at least circumventing where we don't want it to do something with our private data we do not agree with.
That might turn out to be hard.