"Short of not sharing any information at all about anyone..." Agreed! And online services, like Google and Facebook, should NOT be sharing ANY information with ANYONE without EXPLICIT permission from the person who's information it is.

I may want to share a photo of a me at a party with a sub-set of my friends, that doesn't mean that I want that photo to be available to my mother or to a potential employee 50 years from now. When G+ started they introduced 'circles' which encapsulates this concept, and I was happy.

Since google combined all google services under single user name -without giving users a choice in the matter- they lost my support. With the exception of gmail, I've stopped using google services; and as soon as I find an alternative to gmail that meets my needs I'm dropping that. And I haven't used facebook in many years, for the same privacy control reasons.

Anyone even vaguely knowledgeable about technology knows what these company's business models are. They involve targeting adverts at you based on the information (directly supplied or assumed) that they have on you. In Google's case it's been this way for over a decade. This isn't news.

If you have information which is likely to damage you significantly, don't share it on the platforms they provide. Encrypt it. I can't be the only one who's accidentally shared things as public on Facebook. Assume that something you share via these sites (rather than send via a single receipiant message or similar) is semi-public, because history has shown that it often is.

There's a big difference between (a) doing text or image analysis to find out what I drink and then providing advertisements to me for that drink and (b) telling anyone I have ever, in any way, digitally interacted with what I drink!

I have no problem with the first (and in fact prefer it to untargeted ads) and a huge, massive, deal-breaking problem with the second.

I don't disagree that people are responsible to a degree for their own data security. But this case highlights that there is a limit to an individuals ability to maintain their own data security. This woman intentionally shared one name with people associated with one account. If the allegation is true, google then shared a different name with people on that account.

Saying this woman is responsible is like saying I'm personally responsible for my credit card information being leaked by Target. Yes, I used a credit card at Target. Once Target has my information, they should be held accountable for their security and handling of that information. In the same way Google should be held accountable for their security and handling of this woman's information.

> Anyone even vaguely knowledgeable about technology knows what these company's business models are.

many people are not even vaguely knowledgeable about tech or indeed business models. They just know that it's commonplace to be on social media because their friends, families and work colleagues are, so they do it too. Should they be excluded for fear of being outed against their will?

> If you have information which is likely to damage you significantly, don't share it on the platforms they provide.

In a sense, the irony here is that people are saying "if you don't manage your information well or understand the tech you're gonna have a bad time", but really what's happening here is that the people in charge of and developing services like g+, facebook etc don't understand or respect gender identity and similar issues, but of course it's not them that have a hard time, but their users.

The people who are coming up ignorant aren't those who don't get how the digital world ostensibly works, it's those who don't take the time and effort to learn that their own comfortable existence and relative privilege leaves them in a position of being unaware of how difficult some peoples lives truly can be.

To some the idea of whether you're a man or a woman is a really simple and seemingly inconsequential thing, a dev might snort at the idea that anyone could get het up about whether their gender was accidentally revealed through a change, error or bad design. To others it's literally life and death.