Google+: And You Thought Facebook Is A Privacy Nightmare

http://www.conceivablytech.com/8343/products/google-and-you-thought-facebook-is-a-privacy-nightmare

by peternorton • 15 years ago

27 32 15 years ago

tonfa5• 15 years ago

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.

shareme• 15 years ago

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

MetaMan2• 15 years ago

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!

MetaMan2• 15 years ago

Effectively there is an invisible google circle and everyone is in it!

For me this contradicts my understanding of the basic principle of G+ cirlces. I.e that I can post stuff to a few individuals knowing that only they will see it. If Google can, say, use my photos or posts for their purposes without my permissions then its really not that much better than Facebook.

Shame. I've been using G+ over the last couple of days and I like it.

tonfa5• 15 years ago

Note the term: "on or through the Services". And you forgot the last part: "This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services."

The "highlights" is a quite readable version of the ToS: http://www.google.com/accounts/tos/highlights/utos-us-en-h.h...

dkarl2• 15 years ago

I believe "on or through the Services" refers to how the user posts the content: "any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."

This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Does this sentence limit Google's rights, or just its obligations? It seems like its purpose is to clarify when Google may revoke some terms of the license.

Pewpewarrows2• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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

dkarl2• 15 years ago

If I read that correctly, if you use Google+ to share a picture of yourself with your two closest friends, they are giving them the legal right to use that picture in a world-wide advertising campaign. Or show it on a Jumbotron at the Super Bowl. Or email it to your boss. That's unlikely, though. I don't think Google in its current form will abuse that right.

However, since many current users are likely to outlive Google, a real problem will arise when Google fades away sometime in the next twenty or thirty years and is acquired, or Google+ is spun off into a company that then goes bankrupt. All content ever posted will be treated as an asset to be liquidated in the most lucrative way possible.

In other words, Google+ is just like Facebook, and you have to treat everything posted there as "eventually public." I think most people already treat Facebook as completely public because they're friends with people they don't trust, and they are hoping Google+ will be different. Apparently that hope is naive.

Nevertheless, Circles is still the best thing since sliced bread. It doesn't help with privacy much, but it lets me avoid spamming people with posts they aren't interested in. Family stuff goes to my family, geeky stuff goes to geeky people. Circles is for targeting your posts to the right people, not for privacy.

waterlesscloud5• 15 years ago

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.

tonfa5• 15 years ago

Maybe you should report it to Google, in case they are not aware (via the feedback button).

You could also raise the issue to a community manager: https://plus.google.com/109895887909967698705

waterlesscloud5• 15 years ago

I don't bother reporting anything to Google anymore. At one time I'd send feedback on whatever minor issues I found in their products, but I never got any response from them at all so I stopped.

I like Plus overall, as FriendFeed 2.0 if nothing else. I hope they can fix these sorts of issues quickly.

callahad2• 15 years ago

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.

waterlesscloud5• 15 years ago

Hmm. That would make sense, though not entirely desirable. But I'm seeing an email for my friend that I've never used for him, that I didn't even know he had.

What's odd now is that he's updated his profile and his droid phone doesn't show the other addresses and mine still does. So maybe it is address book based, somehow.

Edit- Pretty sure the persistence after he deleted them from his profile is the address book, but also verified the one address isn't in my book. He must have exposed it on his profile without meaning to?

georgemcbay• 15 years ago

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.

judofyr• 15 years ago

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.

callahad2• 15 years ago

> 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• 15 years ago

...And your gender.

I presume you are referring to this: https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Z...

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.

blahedo• 15 years ago

> I would be very concerned if people could change the privacy settings on a post after it's been created.

Why? Certainly this should be no problem at all if the change is a monotonic increase in publicness, i.e. you're not blocking anyone who could see it before. But even if you are trying to decrease publicness, why not? Of course, you can't make someone "un-see" the post, and any feeds or readers that have already picked it up can't be forced to delete it. But, with that caveat, I don't see any problem with making a post more private than it had been, preventing any additional unwanted eyeballs from seeing it.

tonfa5• 15 years ago

I think you can add people (by mentioning them, which means everyone will be aware of it).

To remove people from the post, the only option I've found is deleting the post.

tomp• 15 years ago

Still, there are some privacy related failures that should never have happened...

Your profile photo is always visible in full resolution, even to the general public, and you cannot change that. That in itself is much worse than facebook.

Of course, you can hide the Photos tab, which means that people won't be able to navigate to the Profile photos album, but it's still accessible. I have to try out yet if older profile photos are visible as well.

So, how to make your photos visible to your circles and hidden (but not invisible or inaccessible) to the public? Impossible.

Also, I've found no way to only show people who've added you to your circles. Either you show it to the public, or it's hidden.

There is a feature that allows you to see how your profile appears to your friends, but I'm not that concerned about my friends... I can always delete someone. How about how does it appear to people in your friends' circles, and other people on G+, and the public? I can only see the last one, but I have to use another browser for that.

All in all, from what I see, I'm one of the more invisible people on G+. They really should make most things default to hidden, or just your circles, otherwise they're no better than FB.

tilt• 15 years ago

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...

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

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.

dasil003• 15 years ago

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.

joshuahays• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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...

Google+: And You Thought Facebook Is A Privacy Nightmare

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