The excitement surrounding Google Buzz‘s advent as a real-time social networking / location based service platform integrated with GMail has been dwarfed by a barrage of serious privacy complaints.

The privacy breaches stem from Buzz automatically uploading contacts, photos and sharing details with others without the user’s consent.

A Florida-based GMail user, Eva Hibnick, has told her US law firm to file a complaint against Google for breaking the law as they have shared her personal data without her consent. Her complaint shows that Google have in fact breached many electronic communications laws; Hibnick is seeking financial compensation and an injunction that will stop the search giant from repeating actions in the future.

Google spokesperson explained:
“We haven’t yet been served and won’t be able to comment until we’ve had a chance to review the complaint.”

Earlier in the week Google crushed under pressure and disabled the features that have bred the most complaints such as one tool that automatically arranged your friend list by which users contact most regularly and made this public. Now Buzz will only suggest friends who you contact regularly. Buzz also used to upload user’s images automatically on Picasa and Google’s reader items but this has been stopped too.

Despite this, Google also have a complaint filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) alleging that Google had in fact breached consumer protection laws.

EPIC Executive Director, Marc Rotenberg, stated:
“This is a significant breach of consumers’ expectations of privacy”.

“Google should not be allowed to push users’ personal information into a social network they never requested.”

Responding to this Google has said that they have made improvements to Buzz and planned to make more.

by Richard Armitage