Reply #9: I experienced a privacy problem the first time I used Buzz

[ohiodemocratic]

This is what happened. I went to my gmail. Saw an announcement that said, wanna try Buzz? Or something like that. I clicked yes. I went to my gmail. I was told to set up my buzz.

The default option was to share Picasa and Google Reader information with other contacts. Picasa was listed as "public." I already had two buddies sharing my Buzz before I even blinked. I never checked any boxes saying I wanted to have those buddies.

Anyway, what if I had, say, a naked picture of my wife or girlfriend or myself a Picasa album or something? That would have gone straight to the google search engine for everyone to see. I unchecked the option to share Picasa, but the problem is that other people might not be aware that they are sharing Picasa, since it's been proved that people most of the time leave default settings untouched.

Sharing Picasa was an opt-out agreement. It should have been opt-in.

I don't know if Google fixed that problem. They probably did.