Evil let loose after Google’s buzz breaches email privacy
Once again Google has breached millions of peoples’ personal privacy- this time with the launch of it’s new social networking site Buzz.
The launch of the Buzz networking site has backfired badly
On Tuesday Feb 16th Eva Hibnick, a Harvard law student, opened her Gmail account and saw an offer for Buzz, a new service from Gmail’s owner, Google. She wasn’t interested. “I just clicked ‘No, go to my inbox’,” she said. Within hours she and millions of others realised that sometimes no means yes.
Now Hibnick is taking Google to court, and the search giant is left fighting a rearguard action in the latest skirmish over privacy on the internet.
Hibnick, 24, is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed against Google over the launch of Buzz, a social networking service that lets people bring their online connections together to share status updates, videos and photos.
With 146m users, the sheer size of Gmail instantly catapulted Buzz into the top ranks of social networking sites alongside Facebook and Twitter.
As Gmail users were quick to point out, though, they chose to join those networks, while Buzz’s new army was conscripted. The service raided a Gmail user’s contacts book to set up the social network.
The people we contact most frequently are not necessarily those with whom we have the closest relationship. Within hours of the Buzz launch, angry tales were being told of people’s contact details and other information being passed on to the “psychotic” and “abusive ex-husbands”.
Actress Felicia Day, Vi in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, found herself deluged with messages from strangers after posting one message on Buzz. “Buzz things turn up as a message in your inbox? Disabling now. Heart attack,” she wrote. Before Google changed Buzz, some fans would also have been able to see who Day emailed most frequently.
Hibnick and her lawyer claim that information she had a right to consider private had been shared among her Gmail contacts. “I signed up for a private email account, not for a social networking site. They can’t just opt you in,” she said.
“Basically all my email contacts were accessible. Everyone is so shocked that Google would do this.”
Fellow Harvard law student Benjamin Osborn, who is assisting on the case, said the initial problem was that it was not clear what information was being shared and with whom.
Hibnick’s lawyer said Google could face statutory damages of $1,000 per occurrence — a potentially huge sum given Gmail’s size. But he added that the real aim was to force Google to put better checks and balances in place over privacy.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, the watchdog based in Washington DC, has now asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether consumers were harmed and has asked the commission to demand that Google ask Gmail users to sign up for Buzz instead of enrolling them automatically.
Google moved swiftly to contain the crisis last week, dropping the automatic sign-up and offering clearer instructions on how to opt out of the service and keep messages private.
“We made some mistakes and we accept that,” said Peter Barron, Google’s head of communications. “But if you look at the way we responded, I hope people will see that we reacted quickly to those criticisms and made significant improvements.
“These days everyone leaves a data trail, whether it’s from shopping online, using your mobile phone or doing a search. When you use a credit card you are exposing far more about yourself than in an online search but people generally trust credit-card companies not to misuse their data. At Google, users’ trust is all we have. We take privacy very seriously and build privacy features into all our products based on the principles of transparency, choice and user control.
