Google Reader Begins Sharing Private Data

Felipe Hoffa writes "One week ago Google Reader's team decided to begin showing your private data to all your GMail contacts. No need to opt-in, no way to opt-out. Complaints haven't been answered. Some users share their problems, including one family who says they won't be able to enjoy this Christmas because of this 'feature.' Will Google start doing this with all their products? You can check a summary of complaints in my journal here or browse the whole thread in Google Groups."

Tempest in a Teapot

I'm sorry, but I'm with Google on this one. I was using Reader for a while after it was activated before I noticed it. It shares exactly what I expect with exactly who I expect. I've been using it for about a week now and I haven't felt like there was any violation of privacy.

Re:Tempest in a Teapot

Dude, it is only sharing articles that you clicked on the "share" icon for, and only with your contacts. If you never click on the share icon, nobody sees anything.

This isn't one of those international conglomerate conspiracy theories.

Re:Tempest in a Teapot

But he brings up a valid point. When ever you trust something to the whims of someone else, expect them to be the keeper of it, not you. There were plenty of people who shared with a few people under the assumption that only a few people saw it. When others in the contact list started seeing it, it created problems for them. Why? Because google at their whim change how something worked and people had the ability to access something though you that you didn't count on.

And this goes with on line documents or anything. If they change the policy because of whatever and catch you off guard, your shit out of luck. BTW, if you were a closet homo, would you want you mom and dad to see that you were sharing Gay Marriage articles with your lovers? I mean this as minor as you might think, reaches far beyond simple arguments about who cares. It goes to exemplify why you shouldn't trust anything to another person or company that can make a number of changes without notifying you.

Re:Tempest in a Teapot

Oh pulleeze. Nobody is forcing anybody to use google. When you choose a "service" run by somebody else you accept the risks involved. If you are concerned that it might change then don't use it. Build your own email server and everything else you want at home and stop whining.

That is exactly the point. You cannot trust the other guy. You need to do it yourself. And it isn't that people are forced into using Google, it is that they were charmed into a false sense of security.

It's getting harder and harder to evaluate LEGITIMATE issues with google from the people that just like to complain because they are happy when they are complaining about something thats popular.

I wouldn't consider this a legitimate issue, I would think it was more of an annoyance. But it is still an issue because people do things they don't want others to know about. And when there was an expectation of privacy, even if it was minor, when that expectation gets removes, there needs to be adequate notice given and a means to get out. Even if it means not sharing anything at all.

Sounds like fun for the whole family ;)

BTW, if you were a closet homo, would you want you mom and dad to see that you were sharing Gay Marriage articles with your lovers?

Heh. This sounds like it could be fun, actually, and I'm not even gay. I'm almost tempted to finally get a GMail account and start sharing some gay stuff just to see if mom will try to give me advice about _that_ too.

Hmm, actually, now I'm getting even better ideas. Do they have some feeds about, dunno, bestiality or such?

Re:Tempest in a Teapot

This is a problem, and it's simple and obvious if you look at it. Previously, you shared items, and your friends who knew the page could follow along. Now, you share items, and everyone who chat with or email you have that list right in front of them. Sure, your boss or mother in law could have previously searched around a while and probably found your shared list, but that violates social boundaries on their part, and you have reason to take issue with them for tracking your personal information online.

Now, if they use Reader, they have a list right in front of them of all your interests, just like you have a list in front of you of theirs. If you're into BDSM, new earth creationism, or even (god help me) square dance, it takes a click for them to find out. If that was the original intent of the service, then it's your own damn fault, but beforehand Google put some effort into making it non-obvious to find your page if you didn't know where to look. You didn't have full security, but at least you had the "Why the hell were you tracking down all my personal information at 2am last night, you weirdo?" defense if they went that far.

At first, I figured that Google entering into the social networking market was going to be a big move in their favor, and that they'd blow away the competition, but something like this makes me think that the "social" part is probably beyond their reach. I guess that's what you get when all their technology is designed by 20-somethings that live under their desks at the Googleplex.

(An aside, I live within walking distance from Google, and when you go to the Safeway on Shoreline you can actually pick out all the Google-types. Skinny young guys traveling in twos or threes, talking slightly quietly and huddled together. The fact that more often than not they're wearing Google t-shirts helps.)

Ok right....

Ive just had a quick check.
There is a shared items area in my google reader, however none of my feeds are listed in there.

that is to say - they are not shared by default.
Granted, the feature is there but its hardly invading my privacy without me having a say in what can and cannot be displayed - and by default for me nothing is.

Re:Ok right....

The summary is somewhat misleading - what people are complaining about is that items in the 'shared items' area are now shared with all your gmail contacts (which automatically includes anyone with a gmail account that you have sent an email to), rather than having to manually add contacts as before.

I never "got" GMail

One week ago Google Reader's team decided to begin showing your private data to all your GMail contacts.

I never "got" why people fell all over themselves about GMail and getting a GMail account. I've kept my own domain and use it for e-mail. Should my mail provider do something I don't like, I'd move my mail to another provider and update my MX record. (FYI: my mail provider, registrar, and ISP are 3 different companies.)

Yahoo??

as things stand now I prefer having my email on yahoo/google than on a personal domain just for this reason.

So you don't mind Yahoo pasting spam into your outgoing emails? Those little ads at the bottom of your emails from Yahoo (and msn) users are rather annoying. It's one thing to pay for the service by viewing ads, but it's another to pay for it by spamming non-users.

Re:I never "got" GMail

I agree. Serious professionals do *not* use "@gmail.com" email addresses. Sorry, they just don't. Ditto for "@yahoo.com", "@hotmail.com" etc.

If you don't want to look like a noob, then don't use "@gmail.com" email addresses.

I don't get it

This seems like they just added the same feature that make Del.icio.us such a popular sight. I can understand if this is sharing your pr0n folder with grandma, but if your using an RSS feed for that, than I'm just way behind the times I guess?

Maybe someone with personal experience can help explain this better than the linked articles did. Did it automatically check all your previously stored items as being shared, or does it just default share everything?

Re:I don't get it

For this scenario to play out, you'd have to click on "share" an article from these feeds. Free advice: if you are worried about privacy, don't click on things that say "share". If you do, you might want to unclick them quickly.

Maybe I'm missing something

but there seems to be a fairly obvious way to opt out. Its not sharing any of my private data, because I simply don't use the product.

If you aren't willing to give Google what they want then why should Google give you anything?

Web applications

...more often than not are proprietary software. An open source desktop application would more than likely to have a thousand options for customisation so that all the users are pleased, (gnome applications excluded of course). If you are running proprietary software on your desktop or a proprietary web application then you use what you are given.

damned if you do, damned if you don't

at this point, anything google does is going to piss off someone. They need to keep growing to keep the suits happy, but the more they grow, the less I (and others) like them. Yahoo tried to be everything to everybody and failed it bigtime. Maybe if their search wasn't full of shit results they could look it up.

A big mistake at a critical moment

It's quite a surprising mistake from Google, particularly when the merge with Double-Click "brings greater focus on privacy". Even if they claim that they fix some problems and offer more control to users, they could have make these fix before launching the service... but it's a beta. That's what you risk when you use free beta services.

Furthermore, it is a good example of privacy lack of consideration, and it offers a good argument to privacy defenders. In addition, it highlights the fact that every service offered per Google potentially involves privacy problems. In fact, like Google, I wouldn't have believed that GReader data were so sensitive. And once again, it proves that privacy matters only when you lost it.

So far, we used anonymity to protect privacy, but in that case... proxies are useless. How can we protect privacy against such threats? One solution is to use obfuscation: generating noise (for instance, subscribing to additional RSS flows that we'll never read) in our profile so neither Google, nor our gmail contact can find out which are the RSS flows we are really reading. This assumes that the obfuscation mechanism let only the user know to which flows it really subscribed.

I don't think such mechanism exists now for Greader, but I'm developing a FF plug-in (http://squigglesr.free.fr) to protect search privacy using obfuscation. Keywords are extracting from your favorite RSS flows (for example the one you subscribed in greader) to generate personalized queries. It's quite similar to TrackMeNot (which also use obfuscation), but I'm trying to make less noise but make it more coherent (a good comparison is trying to make lot of noise around what you say, or simply mix some coherent conversations).

Don't bring an internet to a pissing match

So I went looking for how this ruined x-mas for someone and found the link [google.com].

It seems like to me that what started out as something that was shared turned into a pissing match between already barely tolerating each other family members. I fault this summary because intentional escalation of individuals is *not* the fault of google (or anyone other than the parties involved.

Shared items are not private

The laws of physics have begun exposing all of your private items to the world. In a stunning turn of events, it has been discovered that if you place things on your front lawn with a gigantic sign saying "Look at me!", people can freely see them.

"This is outrageous", screamed Peter P Hysterical on the same forum where he documents every nanosecond of his life. "There's no opt out procedure, there's no whitelisting. It's just everyone looking at all the stuff I've decided to share."

God, responding to inquiries said, "Look, if you don't want people to see your stuff, put it inside. I created walls for a reason."

Re:Shared items are not private

You do understand that telling one or two people something while it is "sharing" it with them, isn't the same thing as telling everyone that same thing right? And maybe the fact that so much of everything else is so public, that these few casually private pieces of life would mean more in this respect then an average joe not in the same position.

The problem isn't that it was shared, it was who it was shared with changed and that meant things that you wouldn't tell you boss made it to him directly from you without any notice or any way to prevent it.

Misleading article

...No need to opt-in, no way to opt-out...

Not exactly. According to Google:

"You can hide items from any friend you don't want to see, and you can also opt out of sharing by removing all your shared items."

This would have been disastrous for me.

I'm relieved that I don't use Reader. If I did, I would probably have been sharing atheist and NSFW articles with my spouse and some close friends. I work in politics, and if that stuff had gotten out to other people on my contact lists, my career would have been over. I don't trust Google anymore.

A little more info

First of all, I had no idea what Google reader is: which already makes it a low privacy risk to me. So I did a google for Google Reader, and found this page: http://www.google.com/reader/view/#directory-welcome-page [google.com]. I'm not sure if the message on the side was always there, but it clearly states that it shares the data with "friends". "friends" being people on your google talk list.

I watched the video introduction about it, and it didn't seem to require personal data to use. Nor did the article summary say what the personal data that it was sharing is. So I'm going to guess it is sharing what ever it is that it is helping you get.

What this says to me is that people are still working with the assumption that things online apps hosted by third-parties help them to get it still private. I don't trust my ISP, farless Google. My lack of trust however, doesn't prevent me from consuming their useful services.

Thanks

I just deleted all my gmail contacts to realize that I don't have anything in a shared folder. Thanks.






Just kidding.

I use Gtalk for workplace IM'ing

Does anyone know if it's possible to sign up to any of the job sites with Google Reader? Seems like a good way to drop a subtle hint to my boss.

The issue is a change in semantics

As many readers have commented, this does not seem like such a big deal. Shared stuff being public? Who cares? Don't do it, ya morons! And so on.

I don't use GMail, or Google's reader. However, from TFA and the complaints, it appears as though there was a service where you could aggregate and re-publish feeds through a link that was not (automatically) published anywhere. Google changed the semantics of this, to mean that these "shared" feeds are now automatically available to everyone in your contact list. This (rightfully) has pissed off many existing users, who have invested their time into a system that they must now abandon, because most people have the concept of "mixed company." You don't talk about certain topics in certain groups -- you might be fine making dirty jokes around your regular friends, for example, but you behave yourself when you're at a professional lunch.

So, this is not a matter of not using it -- it's a matter of bait-and-switch. The rules got changed out from under the user's feet, and that leads to a feeling of betrayal in the case where embarrassing information gets leaked. Google gave the impression that you were just hanging out with your friends, and then let in your stuffy colleagues while you were in the middle of telling The Aristocrats Joke [wikipedia.org].

Shitty summary

This is such a bad summary. I have no idea what's going on from this summary.

Others have called it misleading, but I wouldn't know, because I have no idea what it's talking about.

Google reader filtering this article???

I decided to play around with Google reader because of this article. The first subscription I added was /. This article is not showing up in the subscriptions. I tried to force the refresh but still nothing. Maybe it will pop up in a few minutes.

When even the original poster stops ReadingTFA

From the original poster:

No need to opt-in, no way to opt-out.

From the initial, very first comment in the thread they link to:

You can hide items from any friend you don't want to see, and you can also opt out of sharing by removing all your shared items.

Sure, it's a pain: having to disable all of your shared items if you don't, you know, want to share. But it's not exactly "no way to opt-out" when the very first thing they do is tell you how to.

Now, had they been straight and called it for what it is, "You're auto opted in and the only way to opt out is a painful and destructive process that devalues other aspects." then that would be one thing. Blatantly misrepresenting to jump to the head of the wambulance queue - to the point where it's hard to believe it was anything other than deliberate - just devalues your point and loses you all credibility, even for your valid points.

Isn't private data..

Isn't private data supposed to be... well.. private?

I know, common sense need not apply here apparently.

Why would you in the first place?

I don't know why anyone would store anything important or personally sensitive anywhere on the internet anyway, unless you store everything encrypted. I've had close friends of mine under standing orders for years running to never email me anything of a personally sensitive nature, or at least understand that if they do, transmitting it via the internet is completely insecure. I read more and more about "online apps" instead of local apps, and online data storage companies, and I have to roll my eyes because I have to assume that sooner or later someone, either criminals, the government, or the company itself, is going to go browsing through whatever you've got stored on their servers. Bottom line: You want privacy for your data? Store it locally, or better yet, offline.

headline should read...

Google Reader begins sharing public data in a new way.

These were not "private" feeds, they were publicly available URLs (although obfuscated).

I'm not necessarily siding with Google on this one. I do think they should have thought this change of functionality out a little more, but the fact remains this data was already public. Comparing it to the Beacon scandal is not accurate at all.

Uhh I don't get it...

Per Google Reader Group they are only sharing the information that you asked them to share. And only with those that you have used Google Talk. I share things in Google Reader because I want other people to know what I'm reading, and what I find interesting. No where is there any private data, unless you count the profile that you create, which you can limit the amount of data that you place on that.

Google isn't sharing any private user data. If you don't want to share anything then don't click the share icon.

Mr. Hand was right

You are all on dope.

You give Google your private data, while they keep it private.

Are the folks at Google like the magical elves that come out at night and fix shoes? No, Google is a business. The folks who own Google do it for the money. You give Google your private data, and they mine the stuff out of it. There's nothing private about it. Your private data, after you give it to Google, isn't private any more.

Yowza, another kdawson turd

Funny, I actually didn't really care what /. editor posted which story until I read a couple of stinkers six months ago in which half the posters pointed out what a crappy editor kdawson was. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, then, to find this bit of FUD posted by the infamous editor as well.

Seriously, the first link is to a self-referenced Slashdot Journal. The second link is to a google groups thread discussing how google shares with your friends data that you've opted to share with your friends!!!

Seriously. This article is crap.

Responsibility, Freedom, and Technology

You own your life. That is, the actions you take have repercussions, which you have to deal with.

And that extends to the online world, too. My website, I know what I put on there could (theoretically :o) be read by someone and cause a reaction in my life. I choose to put a widget on it that any item I share in Google Reader is (up to the limit on the widget) displayed on my site. I take these things into account when I choose to put something on that site, when I choose to share an item in Google Reader. I choose to make my shared items public (mostly Slashdot stories anyway).

But I do the same thing when I'm talking on the phone with someone, or interacting with them in person. I try to consider what I'm saying and how I'm saying it so that understanding is clear, so that information is easily acquired and assimilated.

And guess what, I'm doing that right now too, here on Slashdot responding to the article.

What is the big deal? There are some details I feel should be private and some of those details are protected by contract or law. The rest of them are at least plausibly available.

You don't know my blood pressure, you don't know my weight (err, I don't even know my blood pressure and weight), but looking through someone's Slashdot comments you can probably learn some details about their life. Same with their website, etc.

Ultimately it's what you're comfortable with. If you want to separate groups of friends or friends & family make another gmail account.

But above all remember this: if you believe your behavior is reasonable, own it. Whatever the reaction of others, good or bad, it's your life. If your wife or husband, son or daughter, mother or father, boss or coworker, friend or enemy has an opinion they'll express it. It may be kind or harsh. At the end of the day you may suffer for being who you are, but that is always better than suffering for being who you aren't.

And you shouldn't feel bad because others don't approve of you, like I said, as long as your behavior is reasonable.

wtf?

The headline and summary of this article are not only false, but probably illegal slander. In no way can the sharing of "shared" data be considered "sharing private data," whether or not some users fooled themselves into thinking it was private. If anything, this is a benevolent move on Google's part because it makes users more aware of the fact that data they are explicitly making public is, in fact, public.

So fuck you, Slashdot, for lying to me and wasting my time.

Tag request

journalplug

When Google Strikes

Gotta love the woman who insists her christmas was ruined because her brother saw her political opinions that he didn't approve of. Is it Google's fault that her and her family has serious respect and acceptance issues? I could have seen if, perhaps, a boss saw this sort of thing, but not one's own brother. You'd expect Bro already knew she was whatever she was, and wouldn't have been surprised by her shared posts. It's not like Google forced him to read her share list, either. If she was hiding her politics from her family... geez, whose fault is that exactly? If her family is so unaccepting, the question of "why spend christmas with them?" comes to mind.

seriously, grow the f**k up /.

so

google will share your public shared list with people you know (and only with people you explicitly know, not "everyone", and only when you actively share it.)

seriously, what the hell is the problem with this?

you people need to grow up.

what shit

Stories like this are why I have virtually stopped reading slashdot.

Google Reader isn't secure anyway

Unlike other Google products, Google Reader doesn't work over SSL, so it's not secure to begin with.

Google Reader has a nice user interface, but until that gets fixed, I'm not using it at all.

No!

I was sharing articles with my other gmail account and effectively using shared items as a tag... I am in trouble... If what the summary says is true this is bad form from Google...

Crap! I gotta check what my contacts might have seen... :(

To respond to half the complaints here:

1. You can't remove shared items easily.
Yes, you can. Settings -> Friends -> Clear Shared Items

2. Your friends can see everything
Only things you share, yes. But whats the point in "sharing" them if no one can see them?

3. Your mom might see your shared items.
Block your mom from doing so, Settings -> Friends -> Hide (Next to mom's name)

4. You're affraid of Google Reader
Well, export your subscriptions and use another product. Simple.

Way off base

You're way off base. First of all, You need to explicitly invite people as friends in reader. Second, only items you explicitly share are visible. When I share an item I've always assumed I was sharing it with everyone.

How to target sharing to different contact groups

Many people are overlooking the fact that you can share specific tags (and each of those shared tags will have its own URL and RSS feed). So, if you want to share stuff with just your family, tag the articles/feeds with a "family" tag, mark it shared and give them the URL. Likewise, do the same for work colleagues, friends, etc. You're not just stuck with one global shared feed for all your contacts and nothing else.

Sounds like C++

Where your friends can see your privates.

Frenemies

I think what a lot of the "public data is public" folks are missing is that even when someone elects to "share" their information with someone else, that doesn't meant that they want that sharing of information to become public knowledge to everyone, for all time.

Up until 12/14/07, the Google Reader had been a bit broken. It was difficult to share information with everyone in an individual's contact list. There were 3 user responses to this: 1. Stop using Reader until this was fixed. 2. Work around the problem, possibly coding something of your own. 3. Take advantage of this issue by selectively sharing with people you want, while not sharing with people you do not.

Google's "fix" brought groups #1 and #2 into the fold, with the effect of alienating group #3. It turns out a lot of people were using this "bug" to keep some people not completely aware of what the account holder was doing. Now, it is all out in the open. The problem, for Google, is two-fold.

First, they did not give adequate notice that this change was going to happen. They announced the change on a Friday night, then immediately implemented it. I am sure that some folks came to work Monday morning and were caught flat-footed by the change. Most of these folks (in camp 3, above) are steaming mad, and are burning up the forums.

Second, they did not give users an option to "revert it back to the way it was". In fact, this has all the hallmarks of a permanent shift, although Google claims publicly that this "is still a very experimental feature". Somehow, I don't believe them. If it were very experimental, they would have switched it back to the original configuration after the 10th complaint hit the forum. It looks like what they really mean is "This is the way it's going to be from now on, so deal with it."

Q: What part of shared don't you understand?

A: If I were to "share" my hard drive across my LAN, wouldn't I feel a little uncomfortable if I saw the contents of my hard drive appear on a public forum, or in a public place? This is the same feeling Google Reader users are getting, I bet. Suddenly a word that they thought meant one thing (shared to a limited group of people in the contacts list) became a completely different concept (shared with everyone in contact list). Such a radical shift should not be implemented overnight, with virtually no user feedback. In fact, even after the feedback, it appears that Google is unwilling to revisit this issue.

Q: Why should I be ashamed or embarrassed to share my information with all the folks in my contact list? I mean, what do I have to hide?

A: Slashdot readers, in particular, should be knowledge regarding the privacy implications of this move. One concept that people have a hard time grasping is contextual privacy. I want to share a certain amount of information with some people (my love of WWII FPS games with my friends) while sharing other things with others (my knowledge of hedge fund movements with Wall Street people). With the new Google model, everyone is on equal footing. My carefully segregated contacts have been ruined, thanks to Google. Oh well, start again with another RSS reader, but the damage has already been done. Now, my Wall Street buddies know I like to play FPS games (I can of much more incriminating examples) and my reputation has been ruined.

If someone doesn't sue Google, I would be surprised. They are a company based in Mountain View, CA. I am sure that there is at least one person in CA who feels "cheated" by Google. We Californians (yikes, gotta stop giving away personal information like that) are a litigious lot, and I'm sure someone is going to claim damages out of this whole thing. The title of my post explains why.

In the Silicon Valley, there people who live by multiple allegiances, and there are people paid to figure out the allegiances of those subjects. If the Godfather taught me anything, it's "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies clos

Shared Responsibility

This calls to mind Facebook's cute way of sending out invitations for your new Facebook page to _every_ contact in your Yahoo account. Completely counter-intuitive but very effective marketing.

So, great marketing tool for Google in much the same way. But counter-intuitive, and I'd also say just as irresponsible to its users.

I hope this is a lesson to people who use online sites to store private data. You cannot trust these companies to use your data in the way you would expect from a friend. Your friends are the people you know. Not the company who knows you know them..

For everyone here that doesn't use GMail...

The big deal here is that Google considers anyone in your GMail _contacts_ list to be a _friend_.

This includes former work associates, clients, people asking for software support, people you replied to via mailing lists, and anyone else who you happened to a) send an email to and b) uses GMail themselves.

This is a gross violation of privacy, folks, even within the privacy-compromised Googleplex. Stop blaming the victims. I signed up for Reader last week and it felt creepy to see shared posts from people I used to work with.

Best developer policy: never extend privileges...

If someone puts data in an area with a defined permission or privilege, then caution is always advised when the permissions are changed.

The Google policy should have been to introduce new levels of sharing, e.g. (a) private, (b) user-defined groups, (c) gmail networked, (d) gmail subscribers, (e) public. Looking at previous posts on this subject, it looks like Google's sharing feature was originally a (b) level, but has been elevated to (c). Google should have left everyone's data in (b), giving users the option to move shared items between new folders that may be assigned permission types (a) to (e).

Analogy: You've just created a blog entry that only you and your friend can read. Your friend makes an off-hand comment, then you make the entry public. Your friend will feel betrayed by the change in privacy.

my mistake

Google, when you let me share certain items from a feed with the ENTIRE INTERNET, I somehow thought that nobody else would be able to see them. My mistake.

It's not the feature...

...it's how it was rolled out. Things that were not shared have now become shared.

If you actually work for Google, it sounds like your attitude is part of the problem.

Yes, the feature is cool. Yes, people will get used to the new way things work. No, it still was not OK how you rolled it out.

I mean, come on. You're fucking Google. You're supposed to be the best engineers in the world. So tell me, how hard would it be to have a "shared" option, and a third "publish" option which was off by default? And then to prompt people on their first login after introducing "publish" whether they wanted their stuff to be shared or published by default, and whether they wanted that change to affect all their shared stuff?

That took me, what, ten seconds to think up, and less than a minute to type, and this isn't even my fastest keyboard.