Gmail automatically set me (and everyone else) up with Google Buzz the other day. Presumptuous, yes, but I didn't really care either way. It's sort of Facebook meets Twitter but requires less involvement because it's right there in your Gmail window and just automatically links you to people in your contacts. You get buzzed every time someone changes their status, posts a link, or uploads pictures, etc. Fine, right? Nope. This afternoon I got two new buzzes. They were the personal IMs of someone in my contacts to other people. (For example: at 2:15 Sally sent Jimmy an IM: Hi Jimmy, wanna get lunch?) Whaaaaaaat?! That's a personal message from one person to another, and now it's in my Inbox?! Minutes earlier, I had sent an IM out and then realized that all the people that were "following" me on Buzz got notified about it! Really, Google? Really?
And to boot, they make it nearly impossible to get out of it. To disable it, you have to individually unfollow and block each and every one of your contacts that they had automatically set you up with, and then shut it off.
There's a whole long list of other sketchy privacy infringements, and they're getting a lot of flak for them. It looks like they're admitting fault and are going to make some changes. But still...not cool Google, not cool at all.
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I read some blog yesterday about a woman who used gmail in her correspondences with two people-- mainly her mom and her ex-husband, from who she was estranged. Because of the "buzz" feature, all her other contacts became public to him, causing all sorts of privacy issues with their divorce, etc.. Yikes!!!
I read that blog too. She's since taken it down from her personal blog, but, strangely, it's still up on Gizmodo:
http://gizmodo.com/5470696/fck-you-google
wow. what was google thinking?
So I just went and turned Buzz back on to make sure that everything was still shut down on my account. I have two new followers. So it seems shutting it off just removes it from your interface but it's still working behind the scenes. I followed the steps for disabling it, but it still doesn't seem to get the message that I want nothing to do with it. Anyone know how to get rid of buzz completely, aside from going back to yahoo?
Here you go, Steph: http://www.pcworld.com/article/189249/how_to_use_google_buzz.html
looks like they've made it somewhat easy to disable it. if you click on the turn off buzz at the bottom of your page, there is a link to "disable buzz" and it deletes your public profile, deletes you from anyone that's following you etc. sounds like google really f'd up this one...
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