For those saying it's unintentional, it's pretty close to what happened with Google Reader and shared items.
For those that didn't hear about it, with Google Reader you can click on feed items to be shared, in which case they become visible from a URL that only you know about, and you can pass that URL to people you want to see the shared items (and they can subscribe to).
Then one day they decided that everyone you've every chatted to should be able to see what you've shared, which caused some rocky times for peoples relationships / jobs / families. Personally, I thought that was very, very predictable.
It was opt-out, and the official work around was to stop sharing things or to delete your contacts. I think they added some finer grain stuff later, but everyone effected had left by then.
They were unapologetic throughout - they didn't see it as a big thing at all, even with the various tales of woe rolling in. It seemed almost like they don't have any procedures for checking if something leaks personal data and that there were no repercussions when it did. Hopefully that will change now something with more public attention has gone in a similar direction.
They did have a point when they said that they never guaranteed privacy, but the secret (pseudorandom looking URL) implies that they weren't going to splash it around quite as much as they did.
For those that didn't hear about it, with Google Reader you can click on feed items to be shared, in which case they become visible from a URL that only you know about, and you can pass that URL to people you want to see the shared items (and they can subscribe to).
Then one day they decided that everyone you've every chatted to should be able to see what you've shared, which caused some rocky times for peoples relationships / jobs / families. Personally, I thought that was very, very predictable.
It was opt-out, and the official work around was to stop sharing things or to delete your contacts. I think they added some finer grain stuff later, but everyone effected had left by then.
They were unapologetic throughout - they didn't see it as a big thing at all, even with the various tales of woe rolling in. It seemed almost like they don't have any procedures for checking if something leaks personal data and that there were no repercussions when it did. Hopefully that will change now something with more public attention has gone in a similar direction.
They did have a point when they said that they never guaranteed privacy, but the secret (pseudorandom looking URL) implies that they weren't going to splash it around quite as much as they did.
See here for an overview http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Google-... and here for the horror stories and complaints http://groups.google.com/group/google-reader-howdoi/browse_t...