
Girl unaware all her pictures are sent to journalist - lordlarm
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dagensit.no%2Farticle2596740.ece
======
gcb0
I'm experiencing something that is obviously dumb users.

i have a first.last@gmail address and my name is very common. So i bet others
had to use less desirable gmail addresses.

Since google started to aggressively push for adding alternative email and/or
phone number, dumb users that initially wanted my email address entered it as
their "alternate email" not understanding it's for password recovery only.

I clicked the "not me" link in more than 20 confirmation emails, but google
probably never used that to better inform the dumb users.

Now my gmail account is a cesspool of emails intended for other people, site
registration confirmation for idiots with same first/last name but a different
middle name... And there's no spam algorithm that can fight that!

Time to start looking for alternatives.

~~~
AJ007
Most of my projects involve a mass-market audience so I get a pretty good view
of what average competence looks like. Based on this, I would guess that a
significant portion of Americans have a great difficultly reading. Even when
you put a big message that says this is not for X, people will continue to do
X.

If you run a startup or a company whose audience is early adapters you get a
skewed view of the average level of competence of users.

I don't know if things get worse in other countries. However, I would guess
that 10-20% of the US population lacks the basic literacy and logic skills to
hold a manual job involving anything but repetitive tasks.

~~~
vellum
_However, I would guess that 10-20% of the US population lacks the basic
literacy and logic skills to hold a manual job involving anything but
repetitive tasks._

~13% when it comes to reading, ~20% when it comes to quantitative tasks.

<http://nces.ed.gov/naal/pdf/2006470_1.pdf>

~~~
derefr
And even besides the people with low IQ, most everyone is only capable of
thinking abstractly _some of the time_ \--and even then only after years of
cognitive development[1]. System 2 thinking[2] is taxing to the brain
(consumes more glucose/oxygen/etc), and is switched out of whenever it's not
absolutely necessary.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piagets_theory_of_cognitive_dev...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piagets_theory_of_cognitive_development#Formal_operational_stage)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory>

------
oellegaard
tl;dr

A Norwegian girl, living abroad, enabled "auto upload my pictures to Google+"
on her phone and for some reason they end up in a Norwegian IT journalists
Google+. Everything from full passport details to regular photos are uploaded.
The journalist can see Geo location etc as well. Google keep stating it is not
possible and the journalist are experiencing problems contacting Google.

~~~
esalman
You do not have to `enable` it, as soon as you add an account to an android
phone, photos automatically start syncing.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
What kind of account? I have my Google account(s) synced up to my Android
phone and have a total of 0 photos in my Google+ album.

I have them syncing with DropBox intentionally.

~~~
dkersten
Same for me - but I noticed that it suddenly started syncing to Google+ too a
few weeks ago (not sure why it started doing this, either there was an update
or it was because I logged into Google+ using the default Android Google+ app
and it enabled it then). Either way, I wasn't particularly happy about it,
though I believe it uploaded them but did not make them public. I turned it
off as soon as I noticed as I don't need my photos synced to two places and I
already had photos synced to DropBox.

~~~
myko
> or it was because I logged into Google+ using the default Android Google+
> app and it enabled it then

It asks you if you want the uploads to take place when you first setup the
app.

~~~
dkersten
Unless its a small, easy-to-miss checkbox, I was only asked to log into my
Google Account.

~~~
lawdawg
it's definitely not small or easy to miss. The whole "instant upload" part is
an entire screen outlining what it is with a clear opt-out.

------
Osmium
Just a warning: blurring pixels in sensitive photos like this is often
insufficient. Always black out the information instead (and make sure to
flatten the image! and not save it as e.g. a pdf with a black bar over it
which has actually happened before too)

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/01/how_to_recover...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/01/how_to_recover.html)

~~~
aaron695
That would be interesting if they actually deciphered a real blurred picture.

Which they didn't cause it's not possible, I mean, left to reader.

[edit: I put it with the myth you need to erase data on a hard disk randomly
multiple times <http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-gutmann.html> ]

~~~
tjoff
Funny how you present your view as fact and then complain about having to put
up with myths...

<http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration2.htm>

~~~
aaron695
No, I more commented on the article made a pretty bold statement and then
didn't follow it up yet everyone buys into it.

I've never seen it actually shown so that to me makes it dodgy. If it was
possible it'd be a pretty cool demo.

(And I assume I don't need to say removing camera blur, the famous photoshop
swirls incident etc is not the same.)

------
web64
I guess tech-journalists gets to try out quite a few mobile phones through
their work.

Would it not be a reasonable scenario that the journalist got to try a phone
and used the Google+ app with his account. Upon returning the phone, it wasn't
reset properly before being sold on to another person. So the Google+ app
could still be associated with the journalist's account when the phone was
sold on.

Update: In this article(<http://www.dagensit.no/tester/article2355417.ece>)
the journalist reviews the Sony Xperia S, the very same phone model that the
girl uses.

------
drakaal
I am guessing there is a user Hash Collision.

Google uses hashes for a lot of things. Hash tables are very fast, and great
for database look up. In Python if there is a hash collision both entries are
compared and resolved by comparison. This is still fast because doing a
compare against 4 collisions is still much faster than doing a compare against
1Billion user names.

That said... The odds get to be beyond astronomical. What percentage of people
are journalists? I mean if they said someone contacted us to let us know, that
would be believable, but "I am a journalist, and this is happening to me"
seems a lot less likely.

I'm not ready to side with Google that this is impossible, but even the
response from Google doesn't sound like the Google I know. While Google is
hard to get a hold of for tech support and resolution of things, if you do get
them to respond to a privacy concern they are swift.

With a Teen Girl they would be even swifter. One naked Bathroom pic and they
are suddenly in the Child Porn distribution business, knowingly infringing
(since they have been told now) on a teen with out her knowledge. That's the
kind of thing that an employee goes to jail for, not just gets some big fines.

~~~
ams6110
_The odds get to be beyond astronomical_

The odds of winning the lottery are pretty poor too. Yet people win them every
day.

~~~
pjscott
Let's not hand-wave; the numbers actually matter here. One-in-a-million
chances happen every day. One-in-2^128 chances do not. If you're exclusively
using a hash for identifying someone, then you'll make sure it's big enough to
prevent accidental collisions. This is not expensive.

------
brudgers
As much as I love bashing Google over privacy. And as highly probable as I
believe the sort of glitch described is likely to occur, two things make me
skeptical of this story.

A) That of all the random ways that a bug like this could manifest itself, it
happened with a tech journalist on the receiving end.

B) That the author spoke with a live human Googler over a customer service
issue in regard to a free service.

The real story here is B not A.

~~~
objclxt
> _The real story here is B not A_

I would assume if you're a journalist in the tech industry worth you salt you
probably have a Google contact you could call.

~~~
brudgers
There is a difference between knowing someone at Google and getting someone at
Google to go on the record in regard to a customer service issue with a free
product as "spokesperson Cristine Sorensen" is reported to have done.

~~~
Evbn
Claims of Brokenness don't get support. Claims of violations of privacy policy
and law get support.

------
OSButler
My wife had a problem with a girl creating a facebook account using a similar
email to hers that somehow got her gmail account connected to that facebook
account.

There was some account sharing going on, as the girl used that email address
to login to her facebook account and all the FB notifications ended up in my
wife's inbox.

At first I thought her account was compromised, but it was a secure password,
so it seemed to be caused by the only slightly differing email addresses
somehow being shared internally by gmail.

Only after activating 2-factor authentication did I manage to prevent that
girl from using my wife's gmail account. However, this was followed by a few
weeks of constant gmail notifications about a detail/password change request
sent to her phone.

------
drucken
" _The girl lives on another continent, so it is not just knocking on the door
either._ "

from

" _Jenta bor på et annet kontinent, så det er ikke bare å banke på døren
heller._ "

Can I assume that is mistranslated since the passport picture shows Norway
which is the same country as the journalist?

Separately, DN.no seems to be a business tabloid, 8th largest, in Norway,
according to Wikipedia
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagens_N%C3%A6ringsliv>).

~~~
zidel
The translation is correct, so she might be living somewhere else.

On the topic of translation issues, "We" in the first sentence of that
paragraph is "Google" in the original which changes the meaning a little.

------
antsam
For the longest time, I used to receive someone else's e-mails on GMail. Our
e-mail addresses were very similar except that mine had periods in it and his
apparently didn't. Either that or he really loved signing me up for things.

~~~
andrewaylett
My understanding is that Google strips full stops before comparing email
addresses and accounts for equality, which is really annoying when people
split their email addresses differently at different times, making them look
distinct when they are actually the same.

~~~
myko
It's really useful to me.

I have a filter for messages to: m.y.g.m.a.i.l@gmail.com

which marks the message read and moves it out of my inbox.

This is the address I give out to companies whose correspondences I don't care
to read generally but don't necessarily want to go directly to the trash.

~~~
scott_karana
You can also use + suffixes, which allows you to label.the address.

Scott+newslettername@Gmail.com for example.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Assuming the crappy regex on the form will accept it.. :( It's better now, but
I still fail about 20% of the time.

------
_delirium
Minor wording point: I think "sensitive" rather than "delicate" pictures is
what's meant here, i.e. in the sense of "sensitive documents".
(Sensitive/delicate overlap in some of their meanings, but not this one.)

~~~
RexRollman
I thought the same thing but had assumed this was a Google Translate issue.

------
Hitchhiker
" Whether you are trying to protect corporate intellectual property or just
the privacy of your personal life, the key idea is that you shouldn't
underestimate the importance of your disclosures, particularly over time. "
[1]

[1] - Conti, Greg (2008-10-10). Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know
About You?

------
ddod
I'm glad to see a story like this getting some press as I've suspected that
I've been dealing with something very similar for years now. Every so often I
get an email from Facebook or some other service asking me to confirm a sign
up I never made and under a different name, and then afterwards (where it gets
strange) I get an email thanking me for confirming. Gmail says no other IPs
have logged into my account and there's nothing in my sent folder related to
it. I've changed passwords and it still happens. It's almost as if I share an
email address with someone but they have a different "account".

~~~
Evbn
That is just someone using your address as their alternate email.

~~~
ddod
I really doubt that, as it doesn't seem like you can put in multiple email
addresses when you are first signing up for Facebook
(<http://puu.sh/2IP5J.png>). I also don't imagine Facebook continues to email
the unverified email addresses after a user has changed their address to pass
the verification.

------
dwc
Uff! Min paranoia fortalte meg å slå av automatisk opplasting. Jeg er veldig
glad jeg gjorde.

~~~
zerr
კარგი გადაწყვეტილებაა.

------
jayferd
slight mistranslation: "...sak som Google ikke kan forklare" means "...that
Google can't explain", not "...that I can't explain". (my Norwegian isn't that
good, but this kind of sticks out...)

------
OGinparadise
Reason #12 why I will not use Google Glass or talk (beyond "hi" and "Yeah,
nice weather") to one that has them on. I don't care how much they keep
pushing them, they have their agenda, I have mine.

Stuff like this has the potential of ruining lives and relationships.

~~~
corresation
Unwanted sharing is not cool, however when you say-

 _Stuff like this has the potential of ruining lives and relationships._

Do you mean that _truth_ has the potential of ruining lives and relationships?

~~~
kevingadd
The idea that context-free photos uploaded to the internet (and potentially
shared with the public) without the subject's permission somehow represent
'truth' is hilarious.

If they say a picture's worth a thousand words, then it's not much of a leap
to apply this quote:

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I
will find something in them which will hang him."

How many pictures out of context do you think it would take to ruin the
average person's marriage? Destroy their career? Make them a public
laughingstock? Not many pictures, if you choose the right ones.

~~~
corresation
The idea that you can misphrase what I actually said so grotesquely is itself
"hilarious".

The GP opined that photos ruin lives and relationships. I've yet to hear a
scenario where a unwantedly shared photo ruined either a life or relationship
where it _wasn't_ that it actually revealed a hidden truth.

~~~
sesqu
You're awfully close to a No true Scotsman argument, there. However, if you're
interested in damaging photos that aren't secret, you need but take a look at
the history of social news. There have been a number of high-profile false
allegations with associated vigilantism.

~~~
corresation
I'm nowhere near that fallacy. I am specifically looking for examples to the
claim that I questioned (the single example provided to me thus far actually
supports exactly what I said).

That the crowd can be stupid (as in the recent Reddit Boston bombing nonsense)
has absolutely no relevance to this.

~~~
sesqu
So what you're looking for is 1) a photo 2) not depicting a secret 3)
publicized unintentionally 4) that ruined a life or relationship 5) without
involving mass misunderstanding

Sorry, I can't provide one for you. The documentation on such events is
typically kept to a small circulation.

