Eva Hibnick, Havard Law Student Settles with Google in Privacy Rights Violation Suit

Google Buzz is a social networking and messaging tool from Google, designed to integrate into the company's web-based email program, Gmail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in ''conversations'' and visible in the user's inbox.

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The suit was filed in a San Jose, California federal court on behalf of herself and the approximately 31 million U.S. users of Google's popular Gmail e-mail service. The lawsuit alleged that Google violated federal privacy and computer fraud laws by adding Buzz to the Gmail service.

According to the class action complaint, ''Google Buzz made private data belonging to Gmail users publicly available without the users' knowledge or authorization. Google has publicly admitted that its Buzz program presents privacy concerns, and Google has made several waves of modifications to the program. However, Google's modifications do not go far enough to address the problem. Furthermore, Google's actions have already caused damage because the Buzz program disclosed private user information the moment Google launched the service. The bell of breached privacy cannot be un-rung.''

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Users began expressing concerns about the complexity of the privacy setting in Buzz almost immediately after its February 9th launch.

In response, Google said it had tweaked the technology to address early privacy concerns just two days after the launch of Buzz. The company noted in a blog post that the modifications should make it easier for users to block access to their pages and also make it easier to find two different privacy features.

In her lawsuit, Hibnick called Google's tweaks to Buzz too little and too late.

Just last week, Google agreed to pay an $8.5 million settlement.

While the settlement acknowledges that Google Buzz’s privacy issues have been resolved, it says the company must do more to educate users about Google Buzz’s potential impact on privacy. 30% of the $8.5 million will go towards lawyer fees, and the seven named plaintiffs (up to $2,500 each), with the remainder going towards organizations and non-profits focused on Internet privacy.

In the February 18, 2010 article by Sharon Gaudin that appeared in Computerworld, Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, was quoted as saying: ''This should definitely be a wake-up call for them to go over Buzz with a magnifying glass and a fine-toothed comb, looking for any other potential problems and try to fix them proactively.''

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