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Tell HN: Enabling buzz exposes your full name and contact list on google profile

by metaguri on 2/10/10, 5:51 AM with 20 comments

This caught me by surprise, so I thought I'd share it. You can go back to your google profile settings and uncheck "Display my full name so I can be found in search" and "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me." I think the privacy settings are all around lacking, but this "feature" was pretty opaque to me--they gave me an option to "save" my google profile when enabling buzz, but since I already had one set up I thought this to be an irrelevant step. I had to poke around for a while to realize that my profile had been changed.

  • by tokenadult on 2/10/10, 6:39 AM

    Good catch. LOUSY default on Google's part.

    I previously had a Google Profile, but of course back then it didn't have a checkbox about people following me or people I follow.

  • by antimora on 2/10/10, 9:24 AM

    I hate the fact that Google have decided to put the social networking feature into my email utility. Noone should mess with my email! I want just email. I really hope there is a way to disable that feature.

  • by Nogwater on 2/10/10, 7:48 AM

    Any idea how to make the geo-location feature on buzzes less accurate? I'd be OK with city level, but not block level.

  • by pasbesoin on 2/11/10, 1:12 AM

    Two words: Opt in. Opt in to participating. Especially opt in to making previously private data public.

    Opt in is the acceptable choice to pose to users. NOT opt out.

    Bah.

  • by contagionhealth on 2/10/10, 8:46 AM

    Defaulting to public vs private settings is something everyone building an app (or platform) where behavioral data (who, where, when, with whom, to do what) is the potential moneymaker faces.

    Interesting however that Facebook after Beacon seems to have taken opposite track, while my full Foursquare checkins show up in Google alerts for my usernames.

    Think Buzz is making a mistake here in terms of earning consumer trust, but will the 'average' Google user convert to a Buzz user in the first place?

    Wondering about search user conversion rates vs. search+docs/apps/gmail etc. conversion rates to Buzz, and if we'll ever see any stats.

  • by hsuresh on 2/10/10, 10:47 AM

    I just checked and found my profile to be private by default.

  • by ScottWhigham on 2/10/10, 12:49 PM

    Wait - I don't quite get it. I've just logged into my google profile and both of those boxes are checked. When I visit my profile page from another browser, I cannot see my contact list. I want my full name displayed but not my contacts.

    Can someone point out how I can find my contacts from this page? I just don't quite get it, I think.

  • by chanux on 2/10/10, 2:26 PM

    Wonder what Paul Buncheit has to say about Buzz :)

    http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-... (via HN)

  • by jolie on 2/10/10, 6:33 AM

    Interesting. Especially since the Google veep and product manager made a big deal this morning about choosing privacy settings.

  • by brown9-2 on 2/10/10, 2:09 PM

    Do you need a "Google Profile" to be able to use Buzz?