People who chose not to use Google’s newest social experiment, Google Buzz, now have one more reason to congratulate themselves on the decision. That means folks who are giving Google Buzz a try may want to be careful, though, as spammers are also testing the figurative water.
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| Spammers Make Situation Iffier For Google Buzz |
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Websense wrote in a blog post, “Today we saw the first spam using Google Buzz to spread a message about smoking . . . . The spammer is already following 237 people, and we can only imagine that he or she has sent similar messages to all of them. This particular message leads to a site hosted on a free Web hosting service talking about how to quit smoking.”
That’s not good for all the traditional reasons people don’t like spam, of course. Then there’s a more specific way in which this could pose a problem for Google.
Given that Google Buzz was already struggling on the PR front (all sorts of privacy issues cropped up since Google sort of sprung the feature on Gmail users without their permission), spammers could do its reputation serious harm. Think of it this way: a cool new technology with some bugs might be found acceptable . . . a new way for spammers to reach people doesn’t stand much of a chance.
Google’s very much in damage control mode at the moment, so we’ll give this a while to see how things shake out.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
