Buzz Is About To Roll Out A Privacy Reset To Everyone

When Google Buzz launched, it was born into a firestorm of privacy complaints. People were worried about its auto-follow feature, as it might expose contacts that they might have preferred to keep quiet, by following them.

Google heard this, and similar complaints, across the whole tech world, and made change after change to its structure over its first few weeks. This patched the largest, most egregious privacy holes.

The company, over the next day (starting now), is going to show every Buzz user their privacy settings and ask them if they are up to that users desires, and specifications.

Given the blizzard of changes that the company has enacted to Buzz, the casual user hardly knows for sure what has changed, and how it affects them. Buzz is out to change that. The feature will show all users their current settings, and statistics, and ask the user to review and amend them. This is a good, and large step forward for Buzz as a whole.

Of course, few people expected Buzz to be perfect, but the level of its non-sophistication in regards to respecting user privacy, especially in a non opt-in product shocked more than a few people. You will note that in the above screen shot Google is showing the user every aspect of their profile: their followers, their following, their public settings, and their connected websites.

That is, in effect, all of Buzz. Google wants everyone to make sure that the doors that they wish to be closed, are shut securely,.

While we can say that this is what we wanted at launch, it is heartening to see it now. Good on you Google for fixing this. Expect to see this today, at some point, depending on where you are.