Google Buzz subject to safety concerns for kids

[Winston]

Just got this message from our daughter's school:

Dear Parents,

Yesterday afternoon, an event occurred during school which brought the issue of internet safety back into our collective world. This incident involved a few students who had accessed a Facebook-like Google product known as "Google Buzz." Google Buzz was launched by Google no more than a month ago, and it is already the subject of class action lawsuits because it makes profiles that were previously private suddenly public.

The students involved realized that they had stumbled onto something inappropriate when they were contacted by someone whom they did not know through Google Buzz. ...

Based upon Google's complete lack of privacy within this product, we deem Buzz to be inappropriate for our entire community and are not allowing its use inside of our community. ...

First I'd heard of Google Buzz. Seems like after Facebook's recent controversy about arbitrary changes to privacy settings Google would be extra careful about this.

The school has banned students from using Google Buzz at school*, and asks parents to talk to their kids about it. I have not (yet) done any investigation on my own of Google Buzz.


Good luck.

- Winston

*It's an all-laptop school, and the policy applies at school. Yes, they use Macs.

[AlphaDog]

Well, Google has apologized for the privacy problems, so there's something to it!

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/ar...ssues.html

[comaplate]

The use of the word "community" sounds very ominous here, even though it's just edu-babble for "school".

[Winston]

comaplate wrote:
The use of the word "community" sounds very ominous here, even though it's just edu-babble for "school".

No, I'd say it's accurate. It's a small school, and very much a community. They didn't specifically address teachers, but my guess is that they are discouraging them from using it as well. The sentence was taken out of a page long letter, so it may look a little funny out of context.

From what I've read, Google has addressed some of the privacy concerns, but not all of them. Google really stumbled on this.


- W