News - Security Issues

Google Buzz and your privacy

Google Buzz is Google's answer to two popular social networking tools -- Facebook and Twitter. Before you try it out, you may want to be aware of an important privacy issue.

Your friends are defined by your existing Google contacts. You can send a buzz (i.e. a status message) privately to a list of friends (if you use Google Contacts, you'll already have various categories in place), to all your contacts, or as a public message.

Beware -- one of the first things you are asked when you sign on to Gmail's mobile site from a GPS-enabled mobile phone is to give Buzz access to your location information. If you give Buzz this permission and then post a status update as a public message, other users who are nearby will see your location -- not the general location, but the full address. Street number, street name, city, state.