Bennett Haselton: Google+ To Gmail Controversy Missing the Point 244
To begin with, remember that on Facebook (which I no longer use, but which I keep up with) does allow you to search for other members' names and send them messages even if they have not yet accepted your friend request. Facebook users are generally not shy when it comes to complaining about problems with the site, but I've never heard Facebook users complaining about junk messages from strangers. (It's true that if you get a message from a user outside of your friends list, it gets routed to the "Other" folder of your Facebook inbox. But similarly, Google says that messages from strangers on Google+ will get routed to a Gmail user's "Social" tab of the inbox.)
So I expect the amount of actual unsolicited emails from Google+ users to Gmail users to be almost a complete non-issue, for the same reason that it's not an issue on Facebook. I assume the reason that Facebook users get so few junk messages, is that Facebook can limit the number of outgoing messages sent per day by any one account (although I don't know what that limit is), and can shut down accounts that are reported for abuse. Yes, a spammer could continually create new accounts to send more messages, but if you create too many Facebook accounts from the same IP address, and each account created from that IP address gets flagged for abuse, Facebook might start disallowing new accounts created from that IP. You could switch your IP address continually, but at a certain point, spammers must have decided that creating disposable Facebook accounts for spamming purposes wasn't worth the trouble, because the simple fact is that they don't do it. So Gmail users are not in danger of buried in spam from Google+ accounts. (By contrast, conventional email spam grew to unmanageable proportions because anybody with an email server could send out millions of messages per day, unless their provider cut them off.)
On the other hand, I think we should be more concerned about the fact that anyone who creates a Gmail address automatically has a Google+ account created for them. This doesn't just mean that any of Google's claims about the "number of Google+ users" are inflated, if they're including everyone who signs up for a Gmail account. (That's a valid complaint, but it's between Google and their shareholders, since the rest of us don't need to care how many users Google+ actually has.) More importantly, it means that all of those users become part of a public database that is searchable by name.
As a test, I went to Gmail.com and created a new user account, entering the first and last name "Zanzibar Higglesbrain" which I figured was probably unique. (Fan fiction authors: knock yourselves out.) Then I logged back in under my own Google+ account, went to the people search page, searched for "Zanzibar Higglesbrain", and found 1 match. (I didn't even need the exact name -- entering "Zanzibar Hi" into the people search box, listed Mr. Higglesbrain among the results.)
Now, when I created the Higglesbrain account, how much up-front notice was I given that I would be adding myself to a public database? I went through the normal signup process, viewed through the eyes of a novice -- after typing in Gmail.com, I was redirected to a page on accounts.google.com with the innocuous title "Create your Google Account", and entered my personal information. On the next page is the somewhat confusingly worded message (I've also posted a screen shot here):
How you'll appear
Choose how you appear across Google by creating a public Google+ profile.
Include a photo - you can update it at any time.
[Link:] Add a photo
[Button:] Next step
This message is misleadingly worded because the phrase "by creating a public Google+ profile" implies that's something you can do, optionally, if you want to. It doesn't really disclose the fact that the profile is being created for you as a side effect of signing up for Gmail. The wording might be interpreted, rather, to mean that your profile will only be created if you upload a photo (which is not the case; your profile gets created regardless). And besides -- what if the user is a novice who went to Gmail.com because they saw all their friends using Gmail.com addresses, and have never even heard of "Google+"? If they haven't consented to their name being added to a publicly searchable database, it shouldn't be their responsibility to know what "Google+" is, so that they can object to their name being listed there.
After you click the "Next step" button, the final page in the account creation process says:
Welcome, [firstname]
Your new email address is [address]
Thanks for creating a Google Account. Use it to subscribe to channels on YouTube, video chat for free, save favorite places on Maps, and lots more.
Note what's conspicuously missing from this message: It doesn't mention Google+ at all, much less the fact that you have unwittingly "joined" it, where other users can find you.
I can think of a couple of scenarios where a user might object to their name being listed in a searchable user database, apart from just "on general principles". If you have a stalker in your past, and they find your name on Google+, it confirms for them that you're probably still alive, that you're probably active on the Internet, and that you're still going by the name that they knew you under. Or, if you have a very unique first name, anyone who knows it could search on Google+ to find your last name, even if you didn't want them to. Similarly, if you have a very unique last name, someone could use the search feature to find the names of your children and other relatives with the same last name, at least those of them that are using Gmail.
And this lack of user consent is a more serious problem on Gmail/Google+ than on Facebook, because most Facebook users create a profile with the general expectation that other Facebook users can find them. Some Facebook users had chosen not to make their accounts searchable -- and Facebook justifiably received a firestorm of criticism for removing that feature and forcing those users' profiles to become publicly searchable after all -- but the overwhelming majority of Facebook users had joined with the understanding that their profiles could be found by others. That's not a valid assumption about Gmail users -- if someone creates a Gmail.com email address, there's no reason to think that they believed they were joining a publicly searchable name database.
Google has tried to mollify people's concerns about emails from strangers on Google+, by specifying that anyone not already in your Google+ circles will only be able to send one message to your Gmail inbox, and will not be able to send more messages until you reply. But this misunderstands the privacy implications in, for example, the stalker scenario. If a stalker ex "Bob" really did find your name on Google+, they might try to tease out a reply by creating a Google+ account under the name of a friend "Alice" you and your ex had in common, and sending you a generic "How have you been doing lately?" message. Since that message probably won't raise any alarm bells (the message isn't asking for anything like a current address or phone number), you might not realize that just by replying, you've already done the damage (the stalker now knows your email address, plus the fact that it's still an actively used account).
Similarly, although you can modify your Gmail settings to prevent strangers on Google+ from messaging you, the ability to change a setting to fix a problem only helps a user if the user realizes when the problem is happening. For example, if the problem resulting from this new feature switch were a deluge of spam from strangers on Google+, then more and more users would get frustrated and look for information about how to stop the flood of spam, and most of them would find out about this setting and switch it off. But for combatting the stalker problem, this setting is useless, because by definition if a stalker finds you on Google+ (and tricks you into replying to a message and revealing your email address), you wouldn't know about that problem until the damage has already been done, at which point it's too late to solve it by changing a setting.
The only way to avoid this risk to people's privacy, would be for Google to ask Gmail users at the time they create a Gmail account: "Do you also want to create a Google+ account, yes or no? This means you will have a publicly searchable profile, and people who know your name will be able to find you." Some people would like to be found, some people would rather not be, and this would allow them to sort themselves properly.
But instead, we have an untold number of zombie Google+ accounts created whenever someone signs up for Gmail, which serve no purpose except to make it possible to find people who never confirmed that they wanted to be found -- all most likely for the reason given by Chris Taylor at Mashable, so that "Larry Page gets to claim increased Google+ user numbers on the next quarterly earnings call."
Bennett Haselton? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who is Bennett Haselton, and why do we care what he says?
Re:Bennett Haselton? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bennett Haselton? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to know who he is, just look him up on Google+
Better yet, look him up on Google+ and send him an email. After all, he states that this linking of Google+ and Gmail won't cause an increase of unsolicited email.
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If you want to know who he is, just look him up on Google+
Better yet, look him up on Google+ and send him an email. After all, he states that this linking of Google+ and Gmail won't cause an increase of unsolicited email.
That's going to inconvenience him about as much as spam mail in the spam folder, considering all the e-mail people send is going to be automatically filed away to the social folder. Your post ended up proving his point that people don't actually understand how the feature work.
I was somewhat pissed off that Google made accepting those e-mails the default in the google+ settings, but I can see why some people would turn it on. In any case, anyone can turn it off.
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he was kind enough to sign up with an even more peculiar name if you want to find him . email Zanzibar Higglesbrain to send to his "private" unknown account.
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Youtube has from time to time prompted me to put in for a G+ account, but I just keep refusing.
By the by...who actually puts their REAL name on there when creating a gmail account?
Re:Bennett Haselton? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at his past submissions if you want to know.
Myself, Im partial to the one where he asked whether we REALLY need the 4th and 5th amendments.
Abolish privacy? (Score:3)
Sure, abolish privacy for everyone who holds a government position. They are working for the public anyway - aren't they.
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This is incorrect. The right against physical coercion is separate from the right to refuse to answer questions.
The right to refuse to answer questions also includes a right not to be physically coerced.
As I said in the original article, the proof of this is that if you are a third-party witness, you cannot refuse to answer questions about a crime about which you may have been a witness (but are not a suspect).
Unless you would incriminate yourself (key word) by answering. It doesn't even have to be for the same crime, you can refuse to answer any question as long as it would incriminate you.
But, obviously, you still can't be beaten up by the police. Because that right is separate from the Fifth Amendment.
You are assuming mutual exclusivity when there is none. Laws overlap. There are laws which prevent police from beating people, which apply to everyone; but, the Fifth Amendment also prevents physical coercion, which isn't necessarily
Founder of Circumventor.com and Peacefire.org? (Score:2)
Seriously, Anonymous Coward wants to know if this account has enough klout to deserve an opinion? If you think that people's insights are only worthwhile because of their notoriety, your using the wrong account.
Maybe some of us care what he says because he has some good points?
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I don't know, but this Zanzibar Higglesbrain sounds like a guy whose G+ feed I would like to follow!
Good idea! I also went ahead and uploaded my picture of Zanzibar, and tagged him!
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The polar opposite of your stories then, you rambling windbag.
Google plus (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google plus (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with your views. Google has jumped the damned shark.
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I agree with your views. Google has jumped the damned shark.
Or, maybe, Google is the shark, a lean, mean, killing machine, devouring everything in it's way.
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Google is jumping sharks in hell? They're evil after all!
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In Soviet Russia, Shark+ jumps you!
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If I wanted to socialize, I would have gone to Twitter/SnapChat/Facebook/MySpace
There's the rub (from google's perspective)
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Most of the businesses I go to are just fine selling me what I want to buy from them, and letting me go elsewhere for whatever I want. Places like Radio Shack that want to try really hard to get my phone number so they can spam me or sell me other crap, those are places I used to shop.
Nobody wants Google+. We don't want it "free," we don't want it toasted, we don't want it roasted, we don't want it in a tree.
We don't want it at our doorstep at 3am with a shotgun, we don't want it on a game trail, we don't
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With volume, you clod. Did you sleep through the late 1990s?
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I think he confused himself so that he would have something to write about. As far as I can tell there is no story here.
Attention! If put a name on the internet people can find it!
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You're confused because you conflate sending private emails with "putting something on the internet." While it has always been assumed that a few sysadmins were reading your "private" emails, much as the postal inspector might open and re-seal your mail, there is a huge difference between sending a private email and "putting something on the internet."
Just like there is a difference between walking across my lawn with a package, and dumping the package out on my lawn.
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As soon as the new "feature" was announced, I went into my account and disabled it.
If I didn't *give* you my email address, I don't want you emailing me.
But I'm pretty sure I know *why* Google did this instead of letting people use G+ messaging:
No one was logging in to their G+ accounts, so they weren't seeing messages.
While technically superior to Facebook, Google+ has virtually no uptake, and all the forced use in the world won't make people like it or use it. Give it up, Google. It's a failure.
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"Not only is G+ not forced upon you, at all, but it's one of the easiest social services to delete your account from, removing ALL your history (every post, every reply, every picture, every single trace of your existence). And to top it off, it allows you, before you delete your account, to download a .zip file of all your posts, if you want."
Says the AC with no link.
IT certainly has been forced on me and if there is an option to delete it short of deleting my accounts on gmail and youtube (which seem to h
Re:Google plus (Score:4, Informative)
"Not only is G+ not forced upon you, at all, but it's one of the easiest social services to delete your account from, removing ALL your history (every post, every reply, every picture, every single trace of your existence). And to top it off, it allows you, before you delete your account, to download a .zip file of all your posts, if you want."
Says the AC with no link.
IT certainly has been forced on me and if there is an option to delete it short of deleting my accounts on gmail and youtube (which seem to have been merged without my consent) in the process it's far from obvious.
Odd, I was able to search and find a delete your google plus link easily. I do agree that it is slightly annoying they don't have a check box to not create the G+ profile but it isn't like they automatically fill it out and push everything into it. You have to manually go to G+ and finish the process if you want it, delete it if you don't.
The poster's stalker premise is also pretty silly. If I'm being stalked am I really going to be dumb enough to create accounts with my actual name on them? The whole thing still strikes me as a tempest in a teapot.
Re:Google plus (Score:4, Insightful)
"I do agree that it is slightly annoying they don't have a check box to not create the G+ profile but it isn't like they automatically fill it out and push everything into it. "
That does not appear to be correct. Since google+ came out a pic that I used for a brief time on google talk (and I made sure it was set to only ever display to people on my chat list) is now showing up on youtube.
"You have to manually go to G+ and finish the process if you want it, delete it if you don't."
And to do that you have to retroactively agree to what they did. Not reasonable, not acceptable.
I have a better idea. Google should go back and delete all the accounts that have not consented, which they should never have created in the first place, and issue a public apology.
"The poster's stalker premise is also pretty silly. If I'm being stalked am I really going to be dumb enough to create accounts with my actual name on them?"
The TOS demands your real name, which would be reasonable if they were not misusing it. Besides which, what usually happens is the stalker comes first, and only afterwards do people learn to be more careful what information they let out.
Re:Google plus (Score:5, Insightful)
haha that's like saying that you're not forced to give the government your photo.
sure you're not. unless you want to drive.
anyways, all this shit is pretty much because nobody wanted to use google+ - but some jackasses had their bonuses tied to the user numbers, so those jackasses then made it so that if you want to use youtube, you'll be a google+ user - and now every new gmail user is a google+ user.
they're just playing a stupid numbers game. this wouldn't even be a problem if they had not along the way fucked up youtube comments(and moderation of them) etc while doing it.
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and just like it isnt very easy for many people to have a job without driving, it is also difficult to do many things without the internet. you should be able to limit your exposure if you would like to, without playing a constant shell game.
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Not only is G+ not forced upon you, at all,
You don't have an Android phone, do you?
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I do.
They're *trying* to force G+ on me, but technically they haven't. Each new service they revise requires G+. They don't force you to create a profile, but features you're used to using disappear without that G+ account.
I can no longer review apps, because that requires my Google+ account. When I was using Google Talk as an IM client, my icon was defined locally (and sent to those on my buddy list via the app.) Now in the replacement for Talk (Hangouts) it is apparently tied to my non-existent G+ acc
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I've already stopped using google search because they pushed too far. Gmail is next on the chopping block if they don't cut it out.
If only it were that easy for all.
My ISP has outsourced its email service to Gmail, and when it did so it sent them a couple of YEARS of DELETED email -- or at least email I thought I had deleted. And then I got stuck in the circle of trying to delete it from Gmail, and their asinine insults about "why do you want to delete anything when you've got so much space to keep it all?"
The University has now outsourced the undergraduate email system to Gmail. I'm expecting the staff email follows very soon, if t
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Are you making this up? It's easy to delete large numbers of messages in gmail.
You can used the advanced search drop-down in the address bar to find the messages you want to delete, assuming they're not already labeled in gmail.
Select the checkbox at the very top, to the left of the delete trashcan icon. Google pops up a messa
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he was probably talking about when Gmail was new, around 2003-2004ish. Enough people griped about not being able to delete email that Google obliged some years later.
And as far as I know, even today Google doesn't actually delete anything, it just keeps the "deleted" email out of your view.
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Are you making this up? It's easy to delete large numbers of messages in gmail.
And then they move to another folder. And when you delete them from there, they move back. All Mail to Trash to All Mail to Trash to All Mail to Trash ... At least those are the two folders I remember it being.
You can used the advanced search drop-down in the address bar
I don't recall my email client having a 'drop-down in the address bar'. You do realize that not all access to Gmail is through your favorite web browser, yes?
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Trash is automatically emptied after thirty days. There's a prominent link to empty it now. No messages don't go back into "all mail" when you empty trash.
There's an advanced search drop down in Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. It's hardly restricted to "my favorite browser". Are you suggesting Google should have made a fully featured webmail for links or w3m?
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Trash is automatically emptied after thirty days.
I didn't want to wait thirty days to get email that I had deleted two years ago out of Google's hands.
There's a prominent link to empty it now.
Not in the email client I was using to do this. Trash is just another folder to it.
No messages don't go back into "all mail" when you empty trash.
Yes, they did. Deleting messages from Trash sent them back to All Mail. Deleting them from All Mail sent them to Trash. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Are you suggesting Google should have made a fully featured webmail for links or w3m?
I know of a "lynx", but that's irrelevant. I think I am suggesting that when someone deletes an email it doesn't just move to another folder, especially when deleting from Trash. And
alternatives? (Score:3)
For me, Google blew it when they forcefully merged my gmail and youtube accounts. I've cut back on gmail as much as I can conveniently. But I still use it.
It's hard to leave when you don't have a place to go. I used to have a nice tree of email addresses, and used them to keep email sorted between business and personal, and such like. Then most of the free email providers ended their services, and now I'm down to gmail. yahoo, and hotmail. Oh, and bigfoot still sort of works. If you call frequent de
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Don't be a cheapskate, pay for FastMail [fastmail.fm] or other decent pay-for email provider. Sign up for a personal domain, most services throw in email accounts for free with a domain, or forward to your FastMail account. Then you are completely independent of the vagaries of the free providers, and you can keep your email addresses regardless of whatever provider or ISP you use, and it will cost very little (~$30/year depending on your choice of domain).
If you insist on free, well, you get what you pay for.
If you want quality, pay for it (Score:2)
Then most of the free email providers ended their services, and now I'm down to gmail. yahoo, and hotmail.
I pay a few GBP a year for a hosted Linux shell account from a local IT firm. I can run whatever web sites I want from it, have it collect and/or forward e-mails and run any related systems I want, etc. It's not free, and neither are the handful of domains I own.
Because I own the domains, I'm paying for the hosting, and everything is set up with real, standardised tools, I can shift anything around any time I want. I can't be held hostage by any business having my data locked up in their proprietary system,
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I also pay a bit more than average to use a good ISP with solid technical specs, clueful people at the other end of the phone on the rare occasions anything does go wrong, things like a static IP address as standard, etc.
Here in America, such a thing is not available at any price. Unless you're willing to settle for dog-slow DSL speeds (forget about any kind of streaming video), you have either 1 or 2 choices for ISPs: your local cable company (like ComCast), or your local telecom company (like Verizon).
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There are free(mium) alternatives to DynDNS, like freedns [afraid.org], so you can change providers if one tanks. If you use your own domain (like freedns allows you to do), you can switch between them without much trouble (you'll just change your NS with the registrar).
Run your own mailserver and pay for backup MX service. This helps ease any worries you may have about losing email (due to your server/ISP downtime, etc). The backup MX is only used if your mail server can't be contacted and will hold mail while you fix
Why Google is a bad company (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the reasons i hate Google, along with Facebook and MS and Apple and many other software developers is the forced changes. If this is so good, why not explain your reasoning and allow for an opt-in? Why must we be forced into some sort of change that we don't want or didn't ask for? It's funny because there are so many Google fans and Apple fans and what have you, but these big monolithic software developers don't care who you are or what you want; they'll force changes on you to their own benefit and F you if you don't want it. /sigh. At least hosting a domain isn't all that hard; time to use my own email.
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Because maintaining a huge amount of different versions and services that all need to work together is extremely difficult and error prone.
The problem is how often "our new changes are going to be great for you" really means "you don't want this at all". They make sure to couple every benefit with many things that you definitely do not want.
Welcome to SaaS (Score:4, Informative)
This is the nature of the software as a service beast.
With traditional software (Windows OS is a good example), you have three choices, embrace the change, discontinue use of the product, or keep using old product and ignore change.
The 'ignore change' evaporates in software as a service model.
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That is an issue with cloud applications, and SaaS in general. You have no way of reverting back to an earlier version should a new update break things.
This is one fundamental lesson -- on the Internet, Heinlein may long since have been worm food, but TANSTAAFL is still the rule of the day. Either you pay for the E-mail account directly, or you deal with a lack of privacy.
The gmail account I have is useful for Android related stuff, but for anything professional, I use an Exchange hosted provider and a cu
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If this is so good, why not explain your reasoning and allow for an opt-in?
a) it's a free service. pay someone some money and you just might get what you want.
b) it is opt-in! don't like google+? disable it: https://plus.google.com/downgrade/ [google.com]
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If this is so good, why not explain your reasoning and allow for an opt-in?
Because then the service provider would have to support every single version of their software, forever. Before long users wouldn't have to decide whether or not to accept new features, because there wouldn't be any.
disallow searching in profile (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the easiest solution and works across all of Google if you simply check the god damn box on the profile page to disable listing/indexing your gmail addy by Google and if you didn't do it during the initial setup or soon after Google gave us the dashboard, you deserve what you get
God damn posting filter - saying I'd posted 47 minutes ago when trying for AC - /. is going to the nuking cockroaches
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Isn't it easier to just ignore a mail you might get this way, since it's unlikely to end up in a priority inbox unless you've got a relationship with that person on G+ anyway?
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Considering the entire gripe was not about unsolicited mail, but that your information in some way is searchable when it previously was not, the solution of ignoring it is not applicable.
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Took me a while to get there.
1.Click on your icon (top right on my browser) to go to Account settings.
2. Click on Google + Settings
3. Under Profile (more than half way down), uncheck "Help others discover my profile in search results."
4. Cross-fingers, because who knows what other options will be added
Re:disallow searching in profile (Score:5, Insightful)
Took me a while to get there. 1.Click on your icon (top right on my browser) to go to Account settings. 2. Click on Google + Settings
Wait a minute. You have to use Google+ to set a Gmail account setting? I would never find that link because I deliberately do not use Google+. Yes, this is very easy to opt out of, sure.
Re:disallow searching in profile (Score:5, Insightful)
"Wait a minute. You have to use Google+ to set a Gmail account setting? I would never find that link because I deliberately do not use Google+. Yes, this is very easy to opt out of, sure."
Ding ding ding. This is how screwed up google has gotten. They sign us up for a new service without our consent, then demand we log into it to opt out of stuff we never opted into. And to do that... you have to consent to the TOS.
It's a neat little trap they have constructed. Do no evil? Hah.
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No, the G+ one is a different opt-out.
The gmail one it is a new setting added on the first tab (general), says "Who can email you via your Google+ profile?"
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This message is misleadingly worded because the phrase "by creating a public Google+ profile" implies that's something you can do, optionally, if you want to.
That is the source of confusion. By skipping the step, you don't choose how your info is displayed. By creating one (or going through the steps) you get to choose.
Bennett assumes a literal reading and blames it when it falls short. The intent is to say here is how to control your info.
The decision to create a shell profile is a different problem, and i
Really missed the point (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems that Mr. Bennett has truly missed the point. The point is that Google no longer intends to offer anybody a new "Gmail account". Henceforth they only offer a "Google+ account with email features."
In 2014 you should expect that Google will roll this change to their Google Voice product. They will stop offering a new "Google Voice account" and will only offer new "Google+ account with Hangout voice features". After that they will eventually stop offering new accounts for their other products and only offer "Google+ account with feature".
Look I don't like the change, but Apple no longer let's you create an Apple email account that isn't also an iTunes account and they have never let you create a FaceTime account that wasn't also an iTunes account.
In fact a common complaint on Apple forums for years has come from people who originally created separate Apple email and iTunes accounts and desperately want to merge them.
Re:Really missed the point (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me they're trying to move away from having gMail as the central account to Google+ being the central account. The problem is that people don't want that because Google+ is another social service (that you don't need to use, but that's what it is.) What they probably should have done is to have a simple Googler Account service that does nothing but contain your basic information and some gommon settings. Gmail, Google+, YouTube, etc are all just service that are associated with a specific Google Account. Peopl feel like they're forced to use Google+ because it's being used as the central coontact point and some want to have nothing to do with it. If you can be emailed via it, I can understand it, especially if this new capability is opt-out, which I think it is.
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Google no longer intends to offer anybody a new "Gmail account". Henceforth they only offer a "Google+ account with email features."
this is a prime example of FUD. you should be modded as a troll.
Google is playing a game of patience. (Score:4, Interesting)
All those slashdotter bemoaning google becoming evil or waxing eloquent about privacy issues or concerned about the victims of stalkers do not form a significant enough chunk of the population to matter. If they were year 2000 would have been the year of Desktop Linux.
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Yes, the void is the part where those numbers change over time, sometimes for security reasons by the user, and people not in continuous contact then fall out of contact, and can't contact each other at all without going through a 3rd party; something that it is not normal to do unless you have a good reason to contact them.
I can open facebook and see what all my old friends from school are doing, who got married, whose profile picture is their kids and whose is their boat. If I really want to I can even se
The Horror! (Score:5, Interesting)
My God! It's almost as if they had taken the names, phone numbers and addresses of millions of people and bound them into some sort of large book before distributing said book to everyone's home free of charge! Can you imagine the chaos such a thing might cause???
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My God! It's almost as if they had taken the names, phone numbers and addresses of millions of people and bound them into some sort of large book before distributing said book to everyone's home free of charge! Can you imagine the chaos such a thing might cause???
White pages tended to be limited to your town, or a small part of your town. Not, you know, 500 million people.
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Cause they totally didn't go and post them on the internet [whitepages.com]
That's completely unrelated to the Telco white pages. That's a data mining site like all the other people finders, aggregating public records with equally poor accuracy.
A quick search shows 90% of the info they have on me in their "teaser" is wrong, and they claim to have my phone number, which they definitely do not. There's a hundred other sites just like that.
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Give me your full name and I bet I can figure out what your home address is and that is way more dangerous than an email address. The point is that you don't need that silly book made out of dead trees to find people any more. You can choose not to list your phone number, but your name is on the deed of you house and that is public information.
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$6/month to not be listed. (Score:2)
It's been so long ago since I had a land-line account, I can't remember if I was paying $8/month for service plus $6/month to not be listed, or the other way around.
Either way, it was possible for pay the phone company so that I did *not* show up in the phone book. Which I happily paid, as I'm one of those people with a unique name, and previously had a stalker.
I dont' know what accounts I have (Score:2)
Not the first time they've done it (Score:5, Interesting)
On the Gmail account I use on Slashdot, I had my nickname, which should be the only publicly visible name, set to "GameboyRMH." I couldn't leave the First Name and Last Name fields blank (they were separate back then) so I set them to "GameboyRMH" and "The Cool Guy."
Then one day last year my sister's giggling that I changed my username to "GameboyRMH The Cool Guy." WTF!? Turns out Google decided to expose what was in my real name fields to the public without my consent. At least my caution paid off.
What a douche (Score:2)
Just the way he writes is so condescending so as to make me want to do the opposite of what he says. If he recommends 21% oxygen then I might give serious thought as to switching to argon.
I think that 90% of us can agree. G+ is a pile of dung being foisted upon us by some MBAs working at google. As for the spam thing. I just got 2 spam ch
So What? (Score:2)
you've already done the damage (the stalker now knows your email address, plus the fact that it's still an actively used account).
So stalkers know the email addresses. What can they do with that information? If they harass the victim they get blocked.
This sounds a little like the "what about the children" arguments.
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For example, your picture is on your YouTube account.
As far as I can tell YouTube users are not searchable by email address. Postings are displayed the YouTube user name and not email address. How can someone see a user photo by email address? Most sites do not have a search by email address because they want to keep that information private.
Upside to this (Score:2)
It allows people to essentially e-mail you without having to know your e-mail address and without being able to send e-mail to you via SMTP.
Think about this for a minute. Spammers and fraudsters like it when they can use botnet-based bulk-mailing tools, because they can send mail quickly and there's no central place that can filter them without catching a lot of false positives. And the filtering fails because it's being done on the receiving end where it has to deal with a lot of unique senders. If I can o
Re: All missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)
That's very naive. What it means is that Google collects more private data, meta data they can cross reference to target ads and still hand it over to the NSA upon request.
Re:tl;dr Phonebook? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's because things were changed after they signed up for an account? Without their permission? In order to cross promote a product no one wants?
Re:tl;dr Phonebook? (Score:5, Funny)
Demand your money back.
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How about I demand my personal information back? Oh wait, you can't do that, they've sold it to everyone already.
Re:tl;dr Phonebook? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:tl;dr Phonebook? (Score:4, Interesting)
That sure is the justification I'd use if I were terrible, and actively trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of spying on people.
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Additionally, the meta data is abstracted away so that it is aggregated and categorized so that Google offers Contact 150,000 "slashdot user" for $4.95 (or whatever).
Unfortunately, you're uniqueness is identifiable given enough identifying points. I don't know how many people with a nom de plume themselves "Archangel" are out there, but I'm sure I'm pretty select group of people from that alone. Given that info and perhaps another three or four, you can get even more selective list and my name would be lis
Re:tl;dr Phonebook? (Score:4, Interesting)
You've got hundreds of posts here bitching about Google. I'm going to guess you knew their privacy policies sometime before they started putting messages from people on G+ in your (low priority) inbox.
How can a guy that links his website every time he posts, and has contact button [ikanreed.net] on that website, complain that he might get an unsolicited email? What sort of lunacy is that?
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Actually, you'll find that form doesn't work. Good luck finding the actual functioning email address on that domain too.
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And no, I don't care the CMS form doesn't work, because that section of the site is only for some friends.
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Likewise, youve already used their services, and you cant give that back either.
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Which is why we'd like the ability to persist the arrangement we originally agreed to, and not need to go to measures like building a doomsday device, burying it deep beneath google's headquarters and issuing anonymous ultimatums.
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Which is why we'd like the ability to persist the arrangement we originally agreed to
The original agreement allowed them to make these changes without consulting you.
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I'd be interested to hear the legal argument why a contract whose terms one party can rewrite at any time is enforceable, and remains enforceable after having been rewritten.
I clicked "I agree" once upon a time, when I didn't grasp the implications. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
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You contract with Google doesn't force any action on your part. You're free to exit the contract at any time by not using their services.
Every time they change their service, you get a new TOS, and you can agree to it or not use their service...
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And if they change their TOS from "we won't disclose personally identifying information" to "we will disclose to the general public whatever we want, whenever we want," I have no power to stop them doing that with data they have already collected. They already have their data, and I can't take it back. My ceasing to use their services will not change the fact that they obtained my data by making promises that they later decided to break.
To be fair, Google has not done anything like that to my knowledge -- b
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I'd be interested to hear the legal argument why a contract whose terms one party can rewrite at any time is enforceable, and remains enforceable after having been rewritten.
There's no contract. A contract is an exchange of obligations. A license is unilateral permission to do something. A movie ticket is a license, you don't have a contractual right to sit through a whole movie. You can be removed from the theater at any time, for any reason. In the same vein you're being granted a license to use Google's services and you can accept it or not each time those license terms are changed.
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The OP may believe that the Google+ "SPAMagedon" isn't coming - however - I have noticed that, over the last week, I have been added to the "circles" of well over one hundred "accounts". When I click on these, most of them are marketing accounts or sock puppets. Some of the names are clearly marketing: "Angry Birds L
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Yep, but them adding people to their circles does nothing for them. Circle membership is one-way: if I put you in one of my circles it gives you access to me as a member of that circle but gives me no access to you. To be useful for spamming those profiles would have to get you to add them to your circles. As for changing mail settings, I'm not sure I'd need to do it. GMail already filters spam, and this would just be a bit more spam on top of what I already get.
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I've got a roughly a thousand people in circles, and I'm in a about a other people's circles -- mostly as the result of playing a game in which having friends helped early on the G+ platform when they first rolled them out [Dragon Age - for whatever that's worth] -- and now from local Ingress circles.
I've always had a smattering of obvious spam/marketing accounts add me, but I haven't seen much of a change at all, and I still haven't seen one email in my inbox from G+. Maybe it's coming, but I haven't seen
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Spammers didn't typically scan the phone book and use automated bots to email all the people in it.
No, but spammers and scammers do use automated bots to CALL all the people in the phone book.
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I did. In the early 90s I was doing a "mobile home wash and wax" business with my dad, and we would copy the reverse-directory from the library, and use that to cold-call everybody in a mobile home park. Otherwise the jobs come from all over, and we were taking the bus to the jobs so we needed them lumped together.
The difference isn't in people doing it, so much as there being enough communication going on that more people know about it.
But spam is not the point, not the point of the complaints, not the poi
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