A watchdog group that recently asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google Buzz has supplemented its complaint with an allegation that the new service violates Google's own privacy policy.
"At the time that Google introduced Google Buzz, the personal information section of the Gmail privacy notice promised to its users that the company would only use their contact lists and other related data 'in order to provide the service to you,'" the Electronic Privacy Information Center alleges in new papers. EPIC alleges that Google violated this policy by using contact lists for a purpose other than its email service. But one potential problem with this argument is that it isn't clear that Buzz is separate from email. Google itself describes Buzz as "a new feature built into Gmail." But EPIC attorney Jared Kaprove says that people don't expect email services to include the social networking elements that came with Buzz. "If Google was to make the argument that Buzz is part of Gmail, that would be fairly disingenuous," he says. "Users know what email is."
