In a recent post, I wondered whether it’s possible to opt out of social networking given that your friends might be entering your email address into Facebook’s database without your knowledge.
Turns out this was timely, because less than a week after that post, Google released Buzz.
Google Buzz, as I’m sure you know by now, had a huge privacy flaw in it: it automatically, for all GMail users, created a social graph out of the user’s most-often-emailed people. And then it made that graph public on the user’s Google profile page.
Google’s defense was that that the graph only became public once you made your first Buzz post, and that there was a check box when making that post which would opt you out of sharing your graph. This defense is weaksauce! Here’s why.
Their first mistake was enrolling all their GMail users without asking first. I notice that the GMail page no longer says “Beta” on it as it did for many years, and if it’s not beta than I shouldn’t have major surprises sprung on me without warning. Their second mistake was automatically making a social graph out of your most-emailed people. The people you email most can be very sensitive information, and it’s not necessarily the same people you want in a social network graph. Their third mistake was making sharing of the graph opt-out rather than opt-in as it should have been. It’s super easy to miss the check box, and the default should always be the safest choice. (This is why Test Pilot is opt-in rather than opt-out, for instance.) Their fourth mistake was that even if I never make a Google Buzz post, I can show up on somebody else’s public list of most-emailed-people, if they didn’t opt out of sharing that information.
This is the same thing that I was angry at Facebook about: I can get entered into a social network database without my knowledge or permission, because of something one of my email contacts did. But this time it’s infinitely worse, because I don’t just get put into a latent Facebook database: I show up on public Google profile pages.
(I’ve heard reports that you can end up with your own automatically-created Buzz network publicized even if you never made a Buzz post, if you had an active Google profile due to other services, like Google Reader or Google Groups. I’m having trouble finding a verifiable source for this, though. Can anyone confirm or deny?)
Having the list of people I email most made public isn’t that bad for me, personally, because I am lucky enough not to have to hide any part of my personal life to protect my safety or my career. I’m not a journalist who has to protect the anonymity of sources, or a lawyer who has to protect the confidentiality of clients, or a whistleblower on corporate corruption, or a political dissident in an oppressive country, whose friends will be targeted by the government if their association with me becomes known. I don’t have to hide from a psychopathic stalker or abusive ex-husband like this woman does. (Her blog is now protected by WordPress and unavailable – did she have to take it down in the wake of the Buzz fiasco due to privacy/safety concerns concerns arising from the Buzz fiasco? The post in question, titled “Fuck You, Google” is mirrored on Gizmodo, and is well worth reading.)
My point is that I’m one of the lucky ones; privacy concerns are far from trivial for many, many people. When someone with privilege and power says things like “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place…” (Eric Schmidt) or “You have zero privacy anyway; get over it.” (Scott McNealy), they show an astounding lack of empathy. They’re obviously not considering things from the point of view of the woman who is the target of violence, or the citizen of an oppressive regime, or the whistleblower, or… anyone other than themselves, basically.
No wonder that a class-action lawsuit is now being filed against Google for the Buzz launch.
I haven’t used Buzz, and I’m not going to. Any chance that I would give it a fair try, write a review, etc. has been destroyed by the way that Google launched it. I’m no longer giving them the benefit of the doubt. I’m even considering dumping my GMail account, which I’ve had since 2004, because it seems that a GMail contacts list is not a safe place to be anymore if Google is going to pull stuff like this.
Before turning Buzz off, I briefly scanned over the list of people to whom I had been auto-Buzz-subscribed. I learned that:
- A guy I used to know in Chicago, who I haven’t spoken to in years, got a package from FedEx.
- Another friend is taking a walk.
- Aza is on an airplane.
Whee. Thank you, Google! Such vital, life-enhancing information is certainly worth the price of broadcasting all our connections to the universe. </sarcasm>
Is this the new status-quo of the internet – that we must constantly be on guard against being recruited into a privacy-compromising social network without our knowledge or consent?
Certainly Google has announced their intention to compete with Facebook, Twitter, etc. and the pressure for each competitor to increase their user count will only increase. Any company doing social networking stuff will face the temptation to press-gang users into their network by any means possible. Ethical companies will resist this temptation and accept only users who have explicitly opted in.
Opt-in and opt-out may seem similar, but there’s a world of difference. Think of all the people who aren’t constantly on top of the latest Internet developments; it might be weeks or months before they discover that they have been automatically joined to something that they need to explicitly opt-out of if they don’t want it.
I am glad to see that Google is now attempting to straighten things out by making the social graph opt-in instead of opt-out. The list of people you email most will now be “auto-suggest” instead of “auto-follow”. That’s good. It’s what they should have done in the first place.
February 20, 2010 at 8:16 am
[…] Posted by jonoscript under Uncategorized Leave a Comment After I found out what Google Buzz was doing, I turned it off as quickly as […]
February 20, 2010 at 12:19 pm
It asked me explicitly if I wanted to try Buzz or not. Did it not ask you? You should just have said no.
February 20, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Jono,
Thank you for posting this.
I, too, was disturbed by the way Google decided to launch Buzz. Unfortunately, I did not realize that using the link at the bottom of the page only removed the Buzz link from the page instead of completely disabling it as I assumed it did.
In fact, I just found that to prevent Google from keeping/storing our web (search?) history, me must first enable Web History and then “pause” it.
Steps to disable Web History:
1. Go to your account settings-separate from your gmail account settings.
2. Click on the Dashboard link.
3. Scroll to Web History.
4. Click on Remove Items or clear Web History.
You may first have to “enable” Web History even though it is likely that you will have seen your most recent searches listed on your Dashboard.
5. Click on Clear entire Web History.
6. Click Clear History confirmation–It should say just above that that this action will also pause Web History.
7. The following page should show that your Web History is now paused.
8. Clear your browser cache and then reload or return to your Dashboard. Under Web History it should now show it as Disabled.
Anyone who thinks that Google or anyone else on the Internet is concerned about protecting our privacy should think twice, even three times.
I was criticized for raising objections to having geolocation integrated into Firefox; that my objections were baseless as no information would be sent unless and until the user opted in to the sending of that information. Considering that, as I understand it, it is Google’s API that Firefox uses and we have seen that Google failed miserably to consider the users’ interests and preferences ahead their own when rolling Buzz out, why should we just accept their assurances that geolocation or Buzz will not be used despite the users’ desires to not use them?
Not unlike Toyota, Google has stepped in it big time. Unlike Toyota who is moving quickly for a company that has logistical issues complicating what it has to do, Google needs to act quickly to reassure its users that their privacy and safety will not be compromised.
February 20, 2010 at 2:36 pm
You are absolutely correct! The default should always be opt-in. Never opt-out.
I am a big fan of Google, but I see a disturbing trend developing in their ranks. The marketing gang seems to be more aggressive and the innovation segment seems to be passively yielding to them.
Has facebook and Twitter so rocked Google that they are now resorting to strong arm tactics to compete in the social networking arena? Google got to where it is today by hard work and innovation. If they build it, they will come, no need to force feed the latest fad.
I believe we lost Google notebook, one of my favorites, because it didn’t fit in with the marketing agenda.
February 20, 2010 at 8:39 pm
[…] Buzz off, Google: Social networks should always be opt-in, not opt … […]
February 20, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Again with the Schmidt quote? How is it that you can say he’s inconsiderate if his words immediately following the ones you quoted were “but if you really need that kind of privacy…”? (Emphasis is mine.)
I think it’s reckless to leave out the rest of Schmidt’s sentence, but omission is common enough in quoting that I don’t get blustered about it. Punctuating it in the way you did, on the other hand—that is, not simply to omit the rest of it, but to assert that that was actually the full sentence—I think it’s more than disingenuous.
February 22, 2010 at 12:22 am
Hi Colby,
I guess wherever I read it from misquoted it too, because I thought that was the full sentence. Since you pointed this out, though, I went and looked up the rest of the quote:
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.”
I don’t think having the full quote changes my argument much. But in the interest of correctness, I’ll fix the quote in the post, and let people make up their own minds.
February 22, 2010 at 12:23 am
Peter: It never asked me. The Buzz UI, complete with list of people I was already following/being followed by, simply appeared in my GMail interface.
February 22, 2010 at 1:42 am
I have several Gmail accounts and not a one of them asked if I wanted Buzz. It may be that if you did not go to Gmail until a day or two after it was first rolled out, they may have changed things and started asking if you wanted it.
February 22, 2010 at 6:43 am
Yeah, I think that’s what’s going on. From the official GMail blog it seems like they’re trying to make Buzz into an opt-in thing now, so I’m not surprised if GMail has started asking you instead of just turning it on. I wish that’s what they’d done in the first place, but at least they’re fixing their mistakes.
March 5, 2010 at 1:27 am
While privacy is the main concern on this issue (obviously!), it is important that we are aware of the serious risk of social networks trying to steal chunks of our valuable and finite time with an ever increasing fusillade of trivial and highly distracting information.
June 6, 2010 at 7:33 pm
[…] reaction to this from many users was prompt and angry: opt out of Buzz and warn others about it. As Jona at Mozilla labs said: Social networks should always be opt in, never opt out. My point is that I’m one of the […]
September 13, 2010 at 9:22 pm
[…] Reader items with their new social graph. It is argued that social network services should be opt-in, rather than opt-out, and that Buzz has violated the consensual nature of the social […]
September 21, 2010 at 10:37 am
[…] for tiden er det stor fokus på personvern og instillinger. Facebooks personvern politikk og Google buzz start er gode eksempler på hva man blir påtvunget som bruker. Men selv med trusselen mot personvernet […]
January 16, 2012 at 4:05 am
[…] feel angry about Google’s innovations being “opt-in”. Remember Buzz? This approach makes Google into a big bully. Opting Out becomes difficult and requires you to have […]