How Google+ Measures Up On Privacy

itwbennett writes "The slow rollout of Google+ has led some to wonder whether Google was trying to create demand through scarcity, but it might just be that the company learned its lesson from the privacy fiasco that was the launch of Google Buzz. 'I think it is very smart of Google to restrict Plus to a "limited field trial" — they aren't even calling it a beta. Google made a misstep with the roll out of Buzz. They've already avoided that mistake with Plus with this limited release. And because it's so exclusive, tech savvy individuals are fighting to get in — just the type of folks that you want as beta testers,' said Sean Sullivan, an F-Secure security adviser. Of course, fixing bugs doesn't necessarily mean that Google will have privacy issues buttoned up. 'Google Plus is clearly designed to give people better control over their privacy with respect to their family, co-workers and friends, [but] there are other types of privacy that it simply can't provide,' says Peter Eckersley, a senior staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'Nobody has succeeded in building a social network that can offer those kinds of privacy protections yet.'"

Obligatory South Park reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Host 1: [Camera zooms in on the two hosts] Welcome back to Money Quest. [Kyle looks at the show] In just over two weeks, young financial genius Eric Cartman [his picture appears on the screen behind the hosts] has managed to turn a theme park that was seeing less than a hundred attendees a day into a thriving park with attendance in the thousands.
Host 2: And the way he did it is with the brilliant "You Can't Come" technique. For the first several days, the young businessman saturated the market with the claim that nobody could get into his park. It made the public crazy. So then, weeks later, when he opened the doors, they were lining up around the block. Simply amazing.
Host 1: Well, ahah I thnk we should point out that this technique is already being applied by businesses all over the country.

What? Is he saying that Diaspora isn't a success?

[Anonymous Coward]

'Nobody has succeeded in building a social network that can offer those kinds of privacy protections yet.'

I can't believe that at all. Diaspora has clearly become a huge success. That's why all of my friends, neighbors, and even my frail old aunt and uncle are using it.

Diaspora has also shown the power of Ruby on Rails, and how easy it is to use Rails to create web sites that are bug-free and totally without security issues.

Diaspora is where it's at. Diaspora is the future. Once Diaspora and Bitcoin are integrated, it'll be an unstoppable force of social change.

Re:How would I know?

[Spad]

I heard that Google employees rifle through your stuff while you're sleeping and then post the information they find onto your Google+ profile even if you haven't created one.

Privacy, BS

[pooh666]

When I went to use my invite, Google asked me for my birthdate, just one of those most imporant piecies of info for idenitity theft, I put in a fake one a usual only this time I made the mistake of making myself too young. Google then disabled my account AND my gmail account until I gave them 30 cents from my credit cart to prove I was old enough!!!!! So that led me to getting all of my email off of google via POP and saying fuck you goodbye.