Google Apologises After Privacy Breach
February 17th, 2010 by adminGoogle has made key changes to its new social network after a surge of public criticism claimed that the service directly infringed users’ privacy.
Buzz is Google’s way of adapting its Google mail service, known as Gmail, into an accessible social network. The default settings of Buzz meant that users Gmail information and data was automatically passed to their Buzz profile, resulting in users being involuntarily signed up to follow the Buzz activity of the people they communicate with the most on Gmail.
Google was not only accused of infringing users’ privacy rights, but of hiding the button to change settings in an little known part of the site’s service menus.
Google initially made the option to opt-out of the auto follow more visible but then changed it altogether so that it merely suggested people a user may wish to opt-in to follow.
Google have apologised for this violation of user’s online privacy, however Buzz will now have to face competition from Twitter and Facebook users to become one of the more popular social networking sites.
