Google Buzzed Privacy

A leading privacy group has urged US regulators to investigate Google's new social networking service Buzz, one week after its launch.

The Electronic Privacy Information Centre (Epic) has made its complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It says that Buzz - which is part of Google's Gmail service - is "deceptive" and breaks consumer protection law. The search giant has twice made changes to the service to placate an outcry from users about privacy concerns.

Canadian officials are also looking at whether Buzz violates privacy laws. "Google still hasn't gone far enough," Epic's consumer privacy counsel Kim Nguyen told BBC News. "Twitter is a social networking site and people know what they are signing up for. With Gmail, users signed up for an e-mail service not a social networking service," said Ms Nguyen. "Despite all the changes, they still do not give users a meaningful way to opt into it."

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