// February 15th, 2010 // No Comments » // p2p
p2pnet view P2P | Advertising:- “Fuck you, Google!” – is what Harriet Jacobs had to say when she learned Buzz, the latest whiz-thingie from mega-advertising Google company, had splashed her very personal and very private data all across the net. Said p2pnet regular Devil’s Advocate in a Reader’s Write , “The recent launch of Buzz completely PROVED that Google is a classic psychopathic corporation”, continuing > > > Here you have a huge company, composed of hundreds of NETWORKING EXPERTS and SOFTWARE ENGINEERS, that launches a social networking application that immediately begins to AUTOMATICALLY share all the available personal information of ALL GMAIL USERS, BEFORE any of those users even had a chance to scrutinize what it was, what it did, and what the implications were. Buzz was launched, TURNED ON, and in an ACTIVE STATE! Regardless of whether the users had or hadn’t created a profile, or even heard about Buzz, or whether or not they’d even demonstrated any intention to use it, Buzz was operating for EVERYONE, sharing EVERYTHING, to EVERYONE ELSE from the get-go. I would challenge anyone to explain how such a technically savvy company, with some of the foremost experts on cyberspace and all its idiosyncrasies, would not have had FULL KNOWLEDGE of what they were doing. Dave Winer, often called the father of blogging and RSS, wasn’t impressed either. “Here’s what happened”, he writes in Scripting News , going on > > > When Google rolled out Buzz last week they activated an unknown number of users and chose people for them to follow automatically based on who they email most frequently with. Presumably these people had to also be on Gmail. And the list of people you follow is public. Therefore the list of people you email with most frequently is now public. They are now trying to close this hole as quickly as possible. But the damage is done, people have to realize that — the information was already disclosed. You can close the door after the horse gets out but that doesn’t get the horse back. This never should have happened. But now that it has, it requires a CEO-level apology and statement of contrition and an explanation of what policies he’s putting in place to be sure this never happens again. That has not happened, and does not appear likely to. So far, Google has only said sorry for the “concern” it’s caused and that, “shows that they’re not owning up to the breach they caused”, says Winer, observing: “The NY Times won’t call it a breach of trust by Google” he says, adding: “Instead they attribute the claim to ‘privacy experts.’ I raised this point, and predictably people say that the Times shouldn’t make factual statements about companies who screw up anywhere but in editorials. That’s ridiculous. A fact is a fact, and belongs in reporting. It’s a fact that Google revealed sensitive information about millions of users, and now they’re scurrying to try to cover it up. And the press is helping them buy time. Why? I have no clue, but I don’t like it.” Happens all the time, Dave, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Meanwhile, Harriet’s site is now password protected and I’m sure that’s no coincidence, although it probably wasn’t necessary — not according to Gargoyle, anyway. Because it has everything under control. So no worries. In our post on Gargle’s latest example of user abuse, “ Informationweek has product manager Buzz Jackson — sorry, that should be Todd Jackson — admitting ‘Google had heard from concerned users who believed their contacts were being made public without their knowledge and who were upset that they had too little control over who could follow them’, we said. Google has “made the option to not display follower information on public profiles more visible”, the story stated, going on > > > The company has also made it possible to block followers who have not created a Google Profile and has made information about followers more clear. While this may restore user trust in Buzz for some, Mike Geide, a senior security researcher with Zscaler who described in a blog post how Buzz could be misused by spammers, says that the service still could be misused. “These improvements could help to prevent spammers from following users who limit their ability to be followed — in other words, it is still up to users to policy their profile,” he said in an e-mail. “[But] E-mail addresses are still visible for those users that your Gmail account has corresponded with, so the e-mail validation problem still exists for Buzz.” But Google reckons its “spam detection systems would be likely foil such spamming efforts”. In p2pnet ’s first write-up on Buzz, we’d pointed out Buzz’s telepathic abilities. It “recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you’re likely to skip,” according to the puff page , which says blandly > > > When you use Google Buzz, we may record information about your use of the product, such as the posts you like or comment on and the other users with whom you communicate, in order to provide you with a better experience on Buzz and other Google services and to improve the quality of Google services. Provide you with a better experience? Riiight – we said. And ‘may’ record? “Your activity on ‘connected sites’ (such as Picasa Web Albums or Twitter) may [there's that word again] be shared in Google Buzz”, it says, continuing > > > You may review and revise the list of connected sites in order to choose which sites to maintain as ‘connected” to Google Buzz. If you use Google Buzz on a mobile device and choose to view “nearby” posts, your location will be collected by Google. If you use a mobile device to create a post which shares your location, then your location will be collected by Google and displayed to other users, as described when you first attempt to use Buzz on a mobile device. You may thereafter opt out of the collection and display of your location on a per-post basis. You can also choose to exclude your location from all of your posts. For features requiring voice recognition, we collect and store a copy of the voice input you make. To improve processing of your voice input, we may also continuously record in temporary memory a few seconds of ambient background noise. This recording stays only temporarily on your mobile device and is not sent to Google. For mobile, we may store some data — such as your user profile photograph and your location — locally on your mobile device in order to reduce latency. “If you chose to delete your Google profile, your Buzz posts will be deleted, but the comments and ‘likes’ you have made on other people’s posts will not be deleted”, says Gargoyle. “You have the option to remove your comments on others’ posts individually if you’d like. Residual copies of deleted material may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems.” And as it admits in its privacy statement: “When you visit Google, we send one or more cookies — a small file containing a string of characters — to your computer or other device that uniquely identifies your browser. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service, including for storing user preferences, improving search results and ad selection, and tracking user trends, such as how people search.” Not only but also, “Google also uses cookies in its advertising services to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web. We may set one or more cookies in your browser when you visit a website, including Google sites that use our advertising cookies, and view or click on an ad supported by Google’s advertising services.” Stay tuned. - … .. … and identi.ca More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi very personal and very private – ‘Fuck you, Google … ‘, February 13, 2010 Scripting News – Google did something seriously wrong, February 14, 2010 p2pnet – Google plans to outFacebook Facebook, February 10, 2010 Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to - | | rss feed: http://-/feed -? -
