News: Buzzed by a lawsuit? Google!

A Florida woman yesterday filed a class-action lawsuit against Google Inc., charging that the new Buzz social networking tool set violates the privacy rights of users.

Eva Hibnick, a resident of Sarasota County, Fla., filed the suit in a San Jose, Calif., federal court on behalf of herself and the approximately 31 million U.S. users of Google's popular Gmail e-mail service. The lawsuit alleges that Google violated federal privacy and computer fraud laws by adding Buzz to the Gmail service last week.

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."

Hibnick is seeking unspecified damages and is asking the court to prevent Google from offering Buzz without "appropriate safeguards, default provisions and opt-in mechanisms."

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(img: vator.tv)