Google apologizes for not protecting its users privacy in Google Buzz, through its official blog. Last year, Google Buzz social network built inside Gmail turned out to be first ever privacy protection horror for the company and is blamed for not protecting is users data and openly accessing Gmail contacts of users. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Google has finally come to terms and Google has made new privacy procedures that would protect the interests of users.
A formal complaint was made to FTC on Google, accusing Google for following ‘deceptive privacy practices’. The FTC stated that Google has violated the FTC Act by not informing the users about the privacy measures. Also Google enables Google Buzz feature by default for all users and provided no means to decline or opt-out of the service. Also, Google never mention about Google Buzz in Gmail Terms and Agreement. This becomes a big privacy issue as Google Buzz can read Gmail contacts for sharing posts.
Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC, said
“This is a tough settlement that ensures that Google will honor its commitments to consumers and build strong privacy protections into all of its operations.”
Alma Whitten, Direct of Privacy (Product & Engineering) with Google, stated on its official blog
Today, we’ve reached an agreement with the FTC to address their concerns. We’ll receive an independent review of our privacy procedures once every two years, and we’ll ask users to give us affirmative consent before we change how we share their personal information.
Now, Google has promised to implement a new privacy program, and all its privacy features will be subjected to independent reviews, every two years for next two decades. (Looks like FTC smacked Google pretty hard). But unfortunately this move is too late for Google as many users must have already stopped using Google Buzz.
With the Facebook privacy debate that forced its ti change the policy and Google latest smacking received from FTC, we can hope that other Internet giants will not goof up the users privacy and provide a simplified and clear privacy policy for the users.
