Google’s new social network, Buzz, has caused a bit of a stir with privacy campaigners recently, with Google admitting they have messed up with their launch strategy.
The concerns centre around the way Buzz integrates with Gmail and other Google services to provide people with a starting network of friends to share content with. Using the user’s e-mail history, it constructs a list of those users e-mailed most often from that account and automatically adds them to their circle of friends. However, this information is then visible to other users, making it possible to see who a particular user is in contact with.
Google stated that since this product had not gone through its “Trusted Tester” program (whereby friends and family of Google staff are used to test products before launch) the issue had not popped up – especially as internal Googlers hadn’t predicted the problem beforehand.
This does leave a bad taste in the mouth as Google collect ever more data on their users. Slip-ups like this should not be happening with a company holding so much private information, especially when they recently criticised the Chinese government for not respecting the privacy of its users.
Tags: google, google buzz, privacy