Massive Google Privacy Flaw
Posted by Greg on February 12, 2010
Do you use Google’s Gmail? With the release of Google Buzz this week, the people you frequently e-mail or chat with are automatically published to your public Google Profile.
Just to be clear: the names of people you frequently communicate with via Gmail or Google Talk may be published for all the world to see.
Here’s one example of why this is so bad. A DV survivor has her activity exposed to her abusive ex: http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/fuck-you-google/.
Here’s detailed information on what Google is doing and how to disable it: http://www.businessinsider.com/warning-google-buzz-has-a-huge-privacy-flaw-2010-2. Unfortunately, disabling it is complicated and confusing.
I rely very heavily on Google tools. Every single e-mail account I have - both personal and professional - is routed to a Gmail mailbox. Google is an extremely generous organization that spends millions of dollars every year to help make the world a better place. The Google employees I know personally are all good trustworthy people. Which is why this gross breach of privacy is so shocking. Instead of defaulting to having users opt-in to exposing their activity, Google Buzz has violated their mantra of “don’t be evil” and done a great deal of harm.
Google: please change the default behavior for exposing personal information to “opt-in”.
Comments
1 | Google has begun to respond to the outcry by privacy advocates:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/millions-of-buzz-users-and-improvements.html
If I understand the response properly, it appears that the privacy issues only apply to users who have created a public Google profile and/or have enabled Buzz on their account.
I'm still quite disturbed that Google would default to exposing frequent contacts, however.
Greg|February 12, 2010|
2 | Gah, thanks for posting this, Greg. So scary! I had a reaction of "wow, okay, so my professional contacts can now see my personal contacts. Weird." but this hadn't yet crossed my mind. I'm sure there are multiple people who this poses a problem for. Hopefully Google will be swift in making changes. Perhaps an email to them would encourage the process to move along.
Kelsey|February 12, 2010|Vancouver, WA
3 | Yup. That was my exact response as well. I wasn't exactly happy that my personal email contacts (and activity) were suddenly exposed to my professional contacts - I often say things as a private individual that I do *not* want associated with my professional persona as a public employee. But then I saw the survivor's post and it opened up my eyes to just how bad it could be.
There's a veritable firestorm right now on the Google help forums and on various tech blogs and news sites. There are *many* people very upset with this uncharacteristic behavior by Google. They're definitely getting an earful.
It's sad that Buzz got started off so much on the wrong foot. I see Buzz as a potentially very useful tool if properly implemented.
Greg|February 12, 2010|
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