Google Buzz surprised many of its users

Google recently launched Google Buzz had to roll back the automatic implementation of the service to its users after strong protest from its users. Google Buzz is nice add on service to all GMail users that helps add social features to their account. Buzz tries to make the social interaction of its users more live and real time that helped stay connected to more people in an new interesting way.

Google is known for such innovations and at the same time takes users security seriously. But with the launch of Buzz which was applied to all GMail users automatically had raised concerns about privacy policies followed by Google. Being a security professional I am aware how important privacy is for all the users.

Google is having huge collection of users personal information (can claim to be worlds largest). Google does have privacy policy in placed as to how such data is managed and stored. Billions of users trust Google with their data and believe that Google will use their information in way as outlined in privacy policy. But with the launch of Google Buzz most of the users were surprised to see that their contact list was turned into Google Buzz friends. This feature have different aspects like access to the list of friends through the Google profile for everyone on the friends list.

This raises the question of is Google using personal data of its users in a way it is authorized to?