I didn’t pay much attention earlier this week when Google announced Buzz. Didn’t get too flapped when the t00bz immediately started buzzing with complaints about privacy, either.<\/p>\n
Yawn, what else is new? Privacy horror stories are par for the course for social-networking sites, and aside from that, those sites are mostly boring as dirt. (Who wants to know about other people’s trivial daily activities?)<\/p>\n
But I’m thinking this new Google mess — even after the alleged fixes<\/a> — is a different order of magnitude. The former “do no evil” people did four really evil things:<\/p>\n All the net-yammer seems to be about the latter two. Perhaps rightly so. People checking their new Buzz accounts have discovered themselves linked (as follower or followed) by their landlords<\/a>, strangers they contacted once through Craigslist, and in one quickly famous case, an abusive ex-spouse. Lovely.<\/p>\n Psychiatrists may have their patients publicly listed as followers. Investigative reporters and bloggers may have their sources revealed to the world, and so on. Yeah, that’ll go over real big, especially in third-world countries where they “disappear” people for that sort of activity.<\/p>\n So sure, evil acts 3 & 4 are killer bad.<\/p>\n But more fundamentally, the entire process of imposing accounts and contact lists on the unwilling, even if they hadn’t<\/i> also pillaged privacy, is so high-handed that it speaks volumes about the mindset that controls the Google empire. Who do they think they are forcing all that crap on people<\/a> — a government?<\/p>\n Google’s alleged fixes all involve making it easier to find opt-out options. But reading their official releases, it’s stunning how vastly they’ve missed the point<\/a> and it’s horrifying that they’re attempting to spin this as some minor technical glitchette. <\/p>\n From there, things just get worse.<\/p>\n It appears that no matter how diligently you hide your<\/i> contacts, you have absolutely no control over how others choose to violate your<\/i> privacy<\/a>. If they’ve got you on their lists and they keep their lists public, you’re screwed unless you can manage to remove yourself or them as followers (something many people are having trouble doing<\/a>).<\/p>\n Furthermore, it appears that any time you post to Buzz, your post becomes public and searchable by default, unless you explicitly make it private. Another completely bassackwards feature.<\/p>\n When gmail was first set up, I swore I’d never correspond with anyone who used it because of its built-in tracking of message content.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, five or six people very close to me opted to use gmail, and I couldn’t cut off all contact with them. I comforted myself that nearly all correspondence between us is encrypted.<\/p>\n When the Buzz buzz finally got through my skull, I was worried that my emphatically non-gmail address might have been compromised. But it seems not. Google is only compromising other gmail users — who are then compromising each other.<\/p>\n The process is quite arbitrary, too. I checked with one gmail-using friend who said the only follower Google had chosen for her was a person she used to have business contacts with. Her best friend, also a gmail user, with whom she regularly corresponds, wasn’t listed. So it’s weird.<\/p>\n I’ve never been a Google-basher, although I’ve been increasingly uneasy with everything the company does. I still think they run a good, lean, useful search engine. But the Buzz fracas is the final straw.<\/p>\n Time to dump Google.<\/p>\n StartPage<\/a> is every bit as good a search engine and is a sterling protector of privacy.<\/p>\n There are other email services aplenty.<\/p>\n Maps you can get from MapQuest<\/a><\/p>\n Those creepy Big Brother arial and street-level photos? Who needs ’em?<\/p>\n Google might want to act like a government, but it doesn’t have a governmental monopoly. So we can all chuck it. Please, if you care about privacy, do.<\/p>\n If you have to stick with Google, here’s some advice<\/a> on how to turn off the worst features. And keep in mind that this situation, Google’s fixes, and information about the mess, are still evolving.<\/p>\n\n