Bob Sullivan, of MSNBC.com's Red Tape Chronicles blog reported today that Google may have inadvertently broken a wiretap law with its new social networking service, "Buzz." According to the website, which focuses on “technology run amok” and “corporate sneakiness,” Sullivan covers Internet scames and consumer fraud for MSNBC.com.
According to Sullivan, Google might be in trouble for automatically signing up millions of Gmail users for its new social network, perhaps violating the users privacy rights. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, even after Google made changes to the server last week.
Sullivan quotes EPIC Executive Director, Mark Rotenberg: “E-mail is one area on the Internet where we have an expectation of privacy. E-mail is for private messages. You sign up for social networking to communicate publicly with people, Google tried to turn e-mail into social networking, and that's where they ran into trouble.”
Apparently, when users logged in to gmail, they were given the offer to “check out” the new service, but even if they declined to do so, they would be automatically activated. Some users felt outed when they saw their frequently used contacts listed publicly. Google has revised the feature and now alerts users that this will occur unless they decide to prevent it.
EPIC has called for greater changes, most notably that it should be a fully opt-in service, and that Google cease using private address book contacts to make social networking lists at all.
This adds another layer to how “private” internet communication is, and the outcome will be interesting to see. Negative public reaction may possibly be a more effective deterrent to Google's continued use of this method to compile lists, even if the FTC doesn't come out strongly against it.
Other blogs have picked up on this issue as well, such as Media Law Prof Blog, which is where I originally picked up on this news story.
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I wasn't happy about this either. I use Gmail because it's easy but Google's business practices make me uncomfortable. They use content-based advertising (ie, they tailor the ads you see to match the content of your e-mail messages and Google searches) and now they publicly display your contacts.
ReplyDeleteYour e-mails and contacts are essentially demographics, data and potential consumers to Google, and everything you type in is stored on a server somewhere in cyberspace.
I don't think private online communication really exists.