

Google+: And You Thought Facebook Is A Privacy Nightmare - peternorton
http://www.conceivablytech.com/8343/products/google-and-you-thought-facebook-is-a-privacy-nightmare

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judofyr
Privacy nightmare? Really?

First of all, Terms of Services are usually always quite broad. Beside, this
is just the regular Google ToS. I wouldn't be surprised if they'll get a
separate one later.

The point about available in search results is fine enough, but the only
information that's forced available is your name, your profile picture and
your gender. If you're commenting on other people posts (either on Facebook or
G+) your name and profile picture _will_ be seen by other people.

Finally: "[G+] provide limited tools to impact the display of your page." Ehm,
have they actually tried the service? Every time you attempt to share
_anything_ you're asked for which circles to include. By default it's empty
(not public like on Facebook) and you'll have to make a choice.

"Posted information is shared with the last defined set of people who you
shared some information with." Yes, but your privacy settings is still shown
right there. Facebook is worse: they hide it away under a security lock icon
which is _always_ locked (even if the post will be public) giving a false
sense of security.

"Once posted, this setting cannot be changed anymore." Uhm, I would be _very_
concerned if people could change the privacy settings on a post _after_ it's
been created.

And let's not forget that everyone working on G+ has been very concerned about
privacy issues. E.g. previously a public post was created when you changed
your profile picture. Some people was harassed on these posts so now they've
changed it to default to "Your circles" (although you can always delete if you
want).

EDIT: Your gender is publicly visible too. Thanks callahad.

~~~
callahad
> _the only information that's forced available is your name and your profile
> picture._

...And your gender.

(And to be pedantic, your short bio is also forced public, though you can opt
to leave it blank. Similarly, any photos that you're tagged in are forced
public and the only recourse is to completely hide the "Photos" tab on your
profile or reject all tags of yourself on photos.)

~~~
bdhe
_...And your gender._

I presume you are referring to this:
[https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Z...](https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Zoiu)

That's Randall Munroe's note on gender being public in Google+, which spurned
a lot of discussion online, for those who haven't come across it yet.

------
tonfa
I wonder why it smells like the previous PR campaign... They quote terms from
the ToS, which are industry standard (you obviously need to have the right to
display and store the data to run the service).

Also I fail to see what's wrong here: "Posts and other content shared by or
with you [...] may be visible on your profile to those with whom that content
has been shared." Of course the content will be visible by the people I shared
it with.

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JonnieCache
We did this one literally last week:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2721905>

Those ToS are standard for all user generated content sites. They are required
for google to provide those services.

All his other points amount to "people might get confused and hurt themselves"
and that's no argument. With that logic, we shouldn't have access to spoons,
let alone social networking.

------
tilt
Does the author even have a Google+ account? Or has he checked the "Profile
and privacy" tab at least?

"Search results

 _Your name and any other fields you make public in your profile are
searchable on the web and may appear in Google Search results._ "

"Public profile information

 _You choose what information in your profile you want to make visible to
specific individuals, to circles, or to everyone_ "

That's the whole point of Circles... You're asked to setup these settings for
every single field...

Yeah I know PR is the way they build from the ground up but I really hope this
is not the way FB wants to fight back...

Put your face on "admin" "in Products", every other single post has a real
name behind it...

------
MetaMan
I spotted this clause as well

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual,
irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce,
adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and
distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the
Services.”

Legally then google can do anything they like with your content, whether you
made it private to a few friends only or completely public. You just have to
trust them. Scary!

~~~
Pewpewarrows
That's actually pretty boilerplate for any website that accepts user-uploaded
content, even if it's just the text of a status update. Standard common-sense
applies here: if you never want someone to ever find something out about you,
never tell anyone else, on the Internet or in real life.

~~~
clobber
So because it's boilerplate to any other website that makes it acceptable and
right?

~~~
Pewpewarrows
Go read the hundreds of posts surrounding the silly debate about the Dropbox
Terms of Service clarification. Any online service that accepts user-uploaded
content is basically forced to include this clause (or something similar to
it) to get around legal oddities to even show you the very own content that
you uploaded, not to mention your friends that you're sharing it with.

People that have no idea what they're talking about read these items in Terms
of Service and scream bloody murder while the rest of the technical folks go
about their business because they know the legality behind it.

------
dasil003
I guess this is a good article for the naive social network user, but honestly
people need to shift their expectations of social networking privacy.
Technically it's very challenging to make fine-grained visibility match up
with user expectations. Coupling this with the fact that social networks make
more money from public data means that social network privacy is going to be a
dangerously shifting landscape during the growth phase until norms are
established.

Facebook has always had the best privacy controls of any social network, but
they get repeatedly burned in the press on pushing the privacy envelope. The
criticisms are fair, but how could expect a business that makes its money from
this data to behave any differently?

We would all be better off if we just treated all social networks like Twitter
by default instead of having some misplaced faith that businesses are going to
protect our privacy when it is only marginally (at best) in their interest to
do so.

------
waterlesscloud
The android app seems to expose email addresses in profiles where the web app
does not. Including, according to one acquaintance, an email address that he
associated with his google account purely for emergency recovery purposes.

~~~
callahad
_UPDATE: False alarm, at least in the case below. It turns out that the mobile
views (web or native) merge in information from your Google address book, but
the normal web interface does not. Weird._

Oh. Wow. It's not just the android app, the mobile web interface does this
too.

And it's not just email addresses, but the full "About" section of the profile
as far as I can tell.

Take my friend Alice, for instance. In the Web UI, I only see that she's a
student and identifies as female. On the mobile site, I see her email address,
her Google Talk address, the fact that she's online, her mobile phone number,
and her home address.

~~~
georgemcbay
If the mobile app/site are merging that information in from your own local
contact information (which I would bet is what is happening here), who cares?
It is just showing you information about Alice that you already have on your
phone due to previous contact syncing.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I think what this is going to turn out to be in the end is a case of people
not realizing what was already being shared via google's account profile in
the contact info.

------
joshuahays
I actually like the privacy settings, people just call it a 'nightmare'
because they haven't taken the time to figure it out. They're like "where's
the do it all button?"...

~~~
noarchy
There are plenty of people who won't bother, if they have to take any amount
of time to figure it out. I've seen plenty of that attitude on Facebook. One
could argue, of course, that we shouldn't worry about such people, since they
don't seem to care anyway.

------
vinced
this is without doubt Facebook sponsored blog post as part of Facebook's
ongoing smear campaign on google.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/12/facebook-
sm...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/12/facebook-smear-
campaign-against-google)

------
shareme
smells like bad PR.. FB has those problems now currently..

