Only a week after Google launched its bid for a social network, a service called Buzz which automatically signs up Gmail users and networks them to individuals in their mailbox, a privacy group has claimed that it breaks privacy regulations. Expressing that the service was “deceptive”, the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (Epic) called for officials in the U.S to investigate whether laws have been broken.
Whilst the service has already been altered twice due to concerns over privacy, Kim Nguyen from Epic explained “Google still hasn’t gone far enough. Twitter is a social networking site and people know what they are signing up for. With Gmail, users signed up for an e-mail service not a social networking service. Despite all the changes, they still do not give users a meaningful way to opt into it.”
The concerns have come after Buzz was automatically rolled out to Google’s 176 million email users. The social networking tool matches up individuals and their most communicated contacts, creating a social circle and automatically enrolling people into the scheme. Therefore allowing details of individuals most mailed contacts to be seen, privacy groups have raised criticisms, expressing that serious implications could be seen for businesses and journalists.
Responding to complaints, product manager for Buzz Todd Jackson agreed that perhaps initial testing had not been widespread enough, saying “We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild.”
