Google Buzz

I've been meaning to write about Google Buzz. It gave a lot of privacy-minded people a headache when it was first launched (and Google has made a bunch of changes addressing some of those issues since then.)

Google Buzz is a neat little tool, and there's things that I like and dislike about it (and how it was launched.) I won't go into all those details, but will give you a few items to check over in case you do decide to use it.

1. Public vs. private posting

• Whenever you post something, you can choose to post it publicly or privately to a group of people. This may be obvious to most of you, but some people hit the "post" button rather quickly and assume it will only be viewable by their friends, when actually the post may be public by default. If it's public, then anyone out there (including Mr. Stranger) could potentially view it.

2. Hiding those you follow/are following you

•  By default, I believe the list of people you are following and the list of people who are following you is public. I'm not sure if you want people to be able to see who you communicate with. If not, you can make these lists private - on the edit profile page, de-select "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me."

3. Google profile

• When you enable Google Buzz, Google will also create a Google profile for you (if you didn't already have one.) Remember, this profile is public (anyone could see it potentially) so you may not want to display too many personal details. You may also want to view the profile while not logged in to see how the profile would look to others.

• Google uses your first and last name on your Google profile. If you use your full name, your profile will appear in Google search results. You may not want people to be able to find your Google profile (which also lists your public Buzz posts) by searching for your name. (I don't, but some people want to be found.) If so, you could replace your last name with your initial, or change it some other way. To change your name or any other info on your profile, go to the Google edit profile page, make any changes and save.

• The address of your profile address may either use your Google username or a random number string. Because this is public, people who access this page could easily figure out your email address (your email address is your Google username @ gmail.com) if your address uses your username. This effectively makes your Google email address publicly discoverable. If you don't want that, you should choose not to customize your URL with your Google email username by not selecting that option (on the bottom of the edit profile page under the heading "Profile URL.")