Does Google Buzz break privacy laws?

Google buzz

It's only a week since Google launched Buzz, but it's already causing controversy over privacy laws as a leading privacy group urges US regulators to investigate Google's new social networking service.

The Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) has made its complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), saying that Buzz - which is part of Google's Gmail service and was automatically rolled out to its 176 million users - is "deceptive" and breaks consumer protection law.

Google Buzz allows users to share personal messages, photos and videos. Hundreds of millions of users of the company's email system, Gmail, were invited to click and join the new social network when it was launched last week. However, the system noted whom a user emailed and chatted to most often from their Gmail account, and made those frequent contacts their "followers" on Buzz.

The search giant has twice made changes to the service over concern from users over privacy.

Epic isn't the only one making a complaint either, with Canadian officials also looking into whether Buzz violates privacy laws.

"Google still hasn't gone far enough," Epic's consumer privacy counsel Kim Nguyen told BBC News.

"Twitter is a social networking site and people know what they are signing up for. With Gmail, users signed up for an email service not a social networking service," said Ms. Nguyen. "Despite all the changes, they still do not give users a meaningful way to opt into it."

The FTC has been asked to "require Google to provide Gmail users with opt-in consent to the Google Buzz service".

The complaint has also asked the FTC to "require Google to provide notice to and request consent from Gmail users before making material changes to their privacy policy in future, and seek appropriate injunctive and compensatory relief."

Criticism

Since launching Google Buzz as part of Gmail last week, the search giant has faced a torrent of criticism regarding privacy.

The feature that attracted the biggest outcry was one which automatically gave users a ready-made circle of friends to follow based on the people they emailed the most.

Privacy advocates said that meant the list of contacts was open for all to see and could have had serious implications for journalists, businesses or even those conducting illicit affairs.

Engineers have now replaced the auto-follow feature with one that suggests who to follow but EPIC said that still leaves the "user with the burden to block those unwanted followers."

The organisation also wants the company barred from using Gmail address book contacts to make up social networking lists.

Google has apologised and said it acted quickly to address concerns including introducing a new option to disable the service.

"If it becomes clear that people don't think we've done enough, we'll make more changes," Todd Jackson, product manager for Google Buzz told BBC News.

The move by EPIC to ask the FTC to investigate Buzz mirrors one it made in December against the world's biggest social networking platform Facebook, when they weren't happy about changes the company made to its privacy settings.

Jodie Humphries

Jodie Humphries graduated from Bath Spa University with a BA Hons in Creative Writing in 2008. She has worked for GDS Publishing for the digital group since July 2009. She has previous experience with writing for the web, running her own website since April 2007.

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