Comments on: Google Buzz, Social Norms and Privacy

By: What every developer needs to know about “public” data and privacy « 33 Bits of Entropy

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:43:49 +0000

[...] woken up to this yet. Unwanted linkage is therefore something that can upset users greatly. The auto-connect feature in Google Buzz is the best example. Opt-in rather than opt-out is probably the way to go, at least for a few years [...]

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:32:52 +0000

Excellent post. Google is just the latest, but I find myself getting very tired of the constant chipping away at our privacy and of the decreasing ability to make choices ourselves on how much we are forced to give away. The default starting position for a service used to be ‘nothing’, it’s quickly heading toward ‘everything’ on any service that is commercially based, although most “amateur” web services are quite the opposite – which makes it very clear as to why.

Your remark that “Google ended up changing society’s norms in a detrimental way in order to meet their business objectives.” is as depressing as it is true. The stark truth is that businesses do this because if they were to start from ‘private’ and ask us to reveal more, we largely wouldn’t, which wouldn’t be good for shareholders. It is not merely that our details and conversations are not private, but that they do not in fact belong to us to control at all and are simply another resource to be plundered at will without regard for any fallout for the owner or the long term potential damage to society.

At the very least, if we cannot keep our information private, there should be laws protecting the commercial exploitation of such data without the owners express consent. After all, I publish commercial photography widely, and copyright laws give me the right to determine how and if that is exploited. How is personal data any different?

By: Arvind

Arvind — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:32:01 +0000

Looks like you’re thinking of auto-connect, which is another feature that Google disabled in response to the criticism but one that I don’t have as much of a problem with.

Auto-follow is about automatically adding your top correspondents to your follow list.

But the larger point here is that there is no doubt that these features are useful to many people. But that doesn’t make it OK to force it on everyone, because it has the potential to seriously harm some people.

By: Anna

Anna — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:01:40 +0000

I sort of like this auto follow. I don’t think I would have ever entered it on my own, but as it stands with one click I can see all the stuff that any of my acquaintances, who actually write, write. See I came across this article only through autofollow.

It might be inconvenient because a person’s writings end up split between so many places: facebook, buzz, blog. If I wanted to read what someone writes, before buzz I only had to check his blog, but now I also have to check the buzz. If I want reread a post, I have to remember was it on the facebook, the blog, or the buzz…

By: Benlog » Buzz Kill

Benlog » Buzz Kill — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:20:20 +0000

[...] here, you really want to be reading Arvind Narayanan’s blog in general, and in particular his post on this issue: When I enabled Buzz and realized what had happened, something changed for me in my head. I’d [...]

By: caz

caz — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:18:02 +0000

So we need to investigate what updates show up. Presumably Google ones but there may be agreements to share with other orgs.
Thanks for the concise explanation. Everything else seemed to be aimed at people who are using Buzz and want to control it. I don’t want ‘in’ at this stage.
Hope your guess is correct.

By: Arvind

Arvind — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:04:32 +0000

For now, there is nothing I could see about you. There is a possibility that as you make new updates (on Picasa, Google reader), they will show up for anyone who's following you. However, I think this is unlikely. In short, my guess is that anyone can follow anyone, regardless of whether they've ever emailed before, but this doesn't result in any information revealed unless the party being followed joins Buzz. Make sense?

By: caz

caz — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:53:28 +0000

Thanks Arvind. So anyone can follow me. Grr. Can I trouble you again and ask what you could see? Q2. Are we all vulnerable if our gmail addresses are a contact for someone turns Buzz on? For instance I emailed someone once about buying a chair from them. They join Buzz – does this make me followable?

By: Arvind

Arvind — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:46:49 +0000

That’s a great question. I tried to follow you, and it allowed me to do that (and I unfollowed you right away). So that means you can follow anyone, even if they haven’t turned on Buzz. I don’t know if that means your Google reader/picasa activity etc. will be fed into Buzz even if you haven’t enabled it. I’m guessing probably not.

Other than that, the only worrisome thing is that your top contacts might be publicly visible, as I explained in the article, for no fault of yours, but because the other party left their auto-follow list publicly visible.

By: caz

caz — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:18:34 +0000

If I haven’t set up a Buzz profile then my privacy on gmail is the same as it was preBuzz. Is this correct? Apologies for treating you like a user’s forum. I’m searching for some clarification and haven’t yet found it.