Software help desk

Today, Google Gmail customers are seeing a promised round of software changes whose purpose is to make Google Buzz users more aware of their privacy options, and to give them a more obvious way to back out of Buzz. These changes come a mere nine days after the social networking product’s rollout as an element of Gmail, although some have already claimed personal damage, and have already begun legal action.Before we went to that extreme, Betanews tested the Buzz changes on accounts where Buzz was already set up. There we noticed the promised Buzz tab has been added to Gmail settings, where as we expected, the user is given the option to withdraw the lists of other Buzz users she’s following from her public Google profile.

This is effectively a copy of the option from Buzz setup that Google only made prominent after its first round of changes at this time last week.

Though the initial problem with new users inadvertently sharing the identities of frequent Gmail contacts with others appears to have been addressed, it was in testing the efficacy of the new option for turning Buzz off that we discovered another potentially serious problem, which can begin with social spoofing, and can lead to the ability to follow other users with complete stealth.