The Data that was exposed was in effect, who your top 6 or so most emailed contacts are. That data was never made public before.
How would you feel if somebody took the top few contacts in your address book and shared them all with each other? That is exactly what Google has done.
As a freelancer would you want the email addresses of your top 6 clients all exposed to each other?
Would you want to explain to your current significant other why you are now following your ex-girlfriends Google buzz? Would you want them to have each others contact info?
Would you want your top six most emailed contacts to be publicly available to your current employer?
Whether people opted in to this behavior via some obscure, hard to understand TOS agreement or not is immaterial. The end result is just poor design though and through.
While I agree that such a data display would be a big problem, it's simply not true about Buzz.
The Data that was exposed was in effect, who your top 6 or so most emailed contacts are.
Only if you have the box which says it makes your following-list public to people following you checked and they set up their public profile. If it's not checked, then no, they can't see the data. Try checking someone you're following who has that box un-checked, and all you'll see is their public profile page and whether or not they're following you.
Again. It's opt-in, and only shows things which are public anyway. If you see a request to make things public, like Buzz offered from day 1, then for the love of God, READ what's being made public. Especially if you have sensitive data on the account, or use it professionally. It was idiotic of them to check the box by default, but individuals are still responsible for leaving it checked.
edit:
The original notification: http://img694.imageshack.us/i/buzzflaw.jpg/ Note that it says "people you follow, and people who follow you". Editing your profile via the edit link before approving allowed you to turn off the "people you follow" display, and now there's a checkbox right on that popup (which should've been there to begin with, but still).
edit2: bah, static link fail. Updated link. Original source: http://is.gd/8Fduj
Just because the option is there and is easy for techies to find doesn't mean that it is reasonable to expect actual not particularly computer literate users to figure it out and uncheck the box if they don't want it.
Thank you for the reply. I was under the impression that the list was public by default. From the link you included this appears to have been the case.
The default behavior shouldn't be to make that list public. I think that is where people are taking issue.
Comments
The Data that was exposed was in effect, who your top 6 or so most emailed contacts are. That data was never made public before.
How would you feel if somebody took the top few contacts in your address book and shared them all with each other? That is exactly what Google has done.
As a freelancer would you want the email addresses of your top 6 clients all exposed to each other?
Would you want to explain to your current significant other why you are now following your ex-girlfriends Google buzz? Would you want them to have each others contact info?
Would you want your top six most emailed contacts to be publicly available to your current employer?
Whether people opted in to this behavior via some obscure, hard to understand TOS agreement or not is immaterial. The end result is just poor design though and through.
While I agree that such a data display would be a big problem, it's simply not true about Buzz.
The Data that was exposed was in effect, who your top 6 or so most emailed contacts are.
Only if you have the box which says it makes your following-list public to people following you checked and they set up their public profile. If it's not checked, then no, they can't see the data. Try checking someone you're following who has that box un-checked, and all you'll see is their public profile page and whether or not they're following you.
Again. It's opt-in, and only shows things which are public anyway. If you see a request to make things public, like Buzz offered from day 1, then for the love of God, READ what's being made public. Especially if you have sensitive data on the account, or use it professionally. It was idiotic of them to check the box by default, but individuals are still responsible for leaving it checked.
edit: The original notification: http://img694.imageshack.us/i/buzzflaw.jpg/ Note that it says "people you follow, and people who follow you". Editing your profile via the edit link before approving allowed you to turn off the "people you follow" display, and now there's a checkbox right on that popup (which should've been there to begin with, but still).
edit2: bah, static link fail. Updated link. Original source: http://is.gd/8Fduj
Remember the facebook login debacle?
Just because the option is there and is easy for techies to find doesn't mean that it is reasonable to expect actual not particularly computer literate users to figure it out and uncheck the box if they don't want it.
And just because they didn't read the EULA on their software / contract at their job does not mean they are not bound by it.
I agree with the initial design errors, but there's never been a privacy leak in Buzz that people didn't tell to exist.
Thank you for the reply. I was under the impression that the list was public by default. From the link you included this appears to have been the case.
The default behavior shouldn't be to make that list public. I think that is where people are taking issue.