Some Google Buzz links
Feb. 15th, 2010 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjonesI haven't had a chance to poke at Google Buzz personally and see what state it's reached in fixing the privacy failures. Below are some links that might be of use. Some points from my reading of other posts --
-- there was a *major* failure with it showing the address and current physical location of Google Mobile users. One of the relevant posts is currently locked, but you can imagine how the person with an abusive stalker ex-husband felt about him showing up on her follower list, with her address and location being broadcast to followers. It seems to have been confirmed that this really was happening for at least some people whether or not they'd ever created a Buzz profile, courtesy of a bug the Buzz team hadn't picked up because they hadn't bothered to do any beta-testing before switching it on for everyone without asking first.
-- the "turn off Buzz" link in tiny print at the bottom of the screen did *not* turn off Buzz, it merely switched off the view of it in your default Gmail display. Unfortunately, a number of clueless wonders on the Google staff who were answering forum questions were falsely telling people that it did switch Buzz off altogether. Ditto the "nah, take me to Gmail" link in the splash screen you were greeted with the day they launched Buzz.
-- the Gmail/Buzz team insist that your follower/following list were not made public until you actually created a profile. Given the assorted bugs already reported, I'd go and check that personally rather than relying on what they say they intended.
Google is still fiddling with Buzz by the hour after realising just how much good-will they'd lost, so some of this may well be out of date.
Zeborah went through and experimented with what you can see on other accounts in Buzz, also posted at Dreamwidth
PC World's guide to tweaking your settings from before Google made some changes, but still a handy checklist.
Supreme Court of Texas Blog on the implications for lawyers and their clients and a further post from Supreme Court of Texas Blog on how to turn off Buzz (and commentary on Google's tweaks to that point.
The GMail team acknowledge the backlash and describes some of the changes made as a result. Note that most of these changes will *not* yet be rolled out to the accounts which have already been compromised.
PC World article on how to manage the Buzz system should you actually want to keep the thing.
-- there was a *major* failure with it showing the address and current physical location of Google Mobile users. One of the relevant posts is currently locked, but you can imagine how the person with an abusive stalker ex-husband felt about him showing up on her follower list, with her address and location being broadcast to followers. It seems to have been confirmed that this really was happening for at least some people whether or not they'd ever created a Buzz profile, courtesy of a bug the Buzz team hadn't picked up because they hadn't bothered to do any beta-testing before switching it on for everyone without asking first.
-- the "turn off Buzz" link in tiny print at the bottom of the screen did *not* turn off Buzz, it merely switched off the view of it in your default Gmail display. Unfortunately, a number of clueless wonders on the Google staff who were answering forum questions were falsely telling people that it did switch Buzz off altogether. Ditto the "nah, take me to Gmail" link in the splash screen you were greeted with the day they launched Buzz.
-- the Gmail/Buzz team insist that your follower/following list were not made public until you actually created a profile. Given the assorted bugs already reported, I'd go and check that personally rather than relying on what they say they intended.
Google is still fiddling with Buzz by the hour after realising just how much good-will they'd lost, so some of this may well be out of date.
Zeborah went through and experimented with what you can see on other accounts in Buzz, also posted at Dreamwidth
PC World's guide to tweaking your settings from before Google made some changes, but still a handy checklist.
Supreme Court of Texas Blog on the implications for lawyers and their clients and a further post from Supreme Court of Texas Blog on how to turn off Buzz (and commentary on Google's tweaks to that point.
The GMail team acknowledge the backlash and describes some of the changes made as a result. Note that most of these changes will *not* yet be rolled out to the accounts which have already been compromised.
PC World article on how to manage the Buzz system should you actually want to keep the thing.
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Date: 2010-02-15 09:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
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