Google improves privacy settings for Google Buzz
Google is making improvements to the privacy settings for its new Gmail service, Buzz. With the launch of the social networking service this week, Google has once again sparked a wave of criticism.
The stumbling block was the complicated or extremely difficult to find privacy settings for Buzz. Users had their profiles set to "public" by default and had difficulty finding out where to change this. Google has now reacted and, according to the press release, announced in a blog post that it will respond to the criticism and make the settings more easily accessible. From now on, Google wants to ask new Buzz users how they want their profile to be seen by others when they first log in. Although the default setting is still "public", it can now be changed at the click of a mouse. There is no longer any need to search in the depths of your own Google account.
Google has also revised the option for blocking individual followers, which is now also easier. Whereas previously only users with public Google profile pages could be blocked, it is now possible to remove anyone from the list from the outset.
Criticism of Buzz's data protection has heavily overshadowed the launch of the new service in recent days. This was not a particularly happy development for Google, which is already under constant fire when it comes to data protection. Once again, the assumption was reinforced that Google was only on the hunt for data anyway and wanted to entice people to produce as much publicly accessible content as possible.
Google has also revised the option for blocking individual followers, which is now also easier. Whereas previously only users with public Google profile pages could be blocked, it is now possible to remove anyone from the list from the outset.
Criticism of Buzz's data protection has heavily overshadowed the launch of the new service in recent days. This was not a particularly happy development for Google, which is already under constant fire when it comes to data protection. Once again, the assumption was reinforced that Google was only on the hunt for data anyway and wanted to entice people to produce as much publicly accessible content as possible.
