Comments on: Google Reader “shared items” provoking fury

By: Boby

Boby — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:04:37 +0000

If you are using something free, I don’t see how there can be any expectation of privacy.
I use free e-mail services, knowing that I don’t own the servers, and at any time an admin could read anything I send. You get what you pay for.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:11:57 +0000

It seems pretty obvious to me that “shared” equals “public”, but Google’s response is rather audacious - “The problem isn’t our software, it’s that you users are using it incorrectly!”

By: Al

Al — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:56:35 +0000

What is wrong with this? Is there a privacy disclaimer on these shared feeds? If there were, I am not sure they would be shared. If something is considered as being private, confidential, embarrassing or proprietary why would anyone want to publish it to an internet site to begin with. Just as I have been taught about e-mail, never send anything that you would not want broadcast to the general public. This information is sent TO Google and is stored on GOOGLE OWNED SERVERS and without any disclaimers that the information will be confidential. Amazing how people carelessly mishandle information and want to blame someone else for something that, apparently, should not have been published in a public, or somewhat public forum, in the first place.
Unfortunately, we still don’t even know exactly what Google stated to this angry user because the user has published talk salad here.

By: Ross

Ross — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:45:40 +0000

As you have suggested, there are already two camps regarding this issue: one that was really annoyed, and another that didn’t see what was the harm…

I personally don’t see what’s the harm. The new feature only applies to the “public” feed, which is already an indiscriminate way for sharing articles with others. I acknowledge that the “shared feed” is obfuscated, and therefore it is difficult for unauthorized users to run into it by accident, but obfuscation is no replacement for real and secure protection. Once a person emails aways the URL to his or her public feed, then that person loses control over the URL, and therefore that person is forfeiting the right to privacy. If I shared my URL with friends A, B, C, then how can I be sure that they properly protected the URL and prevented users X, Y or Z from accessing it? Even worse, if the URL is compromised, then we can’t tell who leaked the URL and we can’t revoke the URL.

Because of all of that, I have always hesitated from adding any articles to my shared feed, and I didn’t understand what that feature would be useful for (other than feeling free to share with the whole world).

What would have been nice of Google is to allow me to set up multiple public feeds so that I can customize the access list on a per-public-feed basis. This way, I can share my technology articles with friends at work, and political articles with friends elsewhere (just an example).

By: Gavin Bollard

Gavin Bollard — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 01:49:24 +0000

This is a pretty major goof on Google’s part. Obviously some people subscribed to some feeds on topics they want hidden from their other contacts.

It is a blatant disregard for privacy which could cause a lot of problems for some people.

Examples;

If your boss can see your feed and it has employment sites on it.
If you’re married and you have subscribed to personals

Google needs to lock this feature down and give their users control over their own information. I can’t see this problem dying down any other way - at the very least, it may kill Google Reader as an application.