The changed headline after pressure from Google
Last week, we told you about Dan Nolan, the Australian developer whose "Paul Keating Insult Generator" app made it all the way to number one in the Australian App Store. Recently, Nolan was stunned to find the name, address and email address of
every person who bought his app waiting for him when he logged into his Google Play Store account. It even listed the information of people who started to purchase the app, but canceled the purchase. The original story about this broke in Australia on the
News.com.au site after Nolan disclosed his situation to them. The original headline stated, "
Massive Google security flaw puts users' details on display for all to find." But the use of the word 'flaw' seemed to stick in Google's craw as you will find out.
According to
News.com.au, Google asked them to make some changes to the story, starting with the headline. Claire Porter, who was the author of the story, said that Google's main issue was with the word flaw. The Mountain View crew was aghast at the idea that allowing developers to view customer information would be considered a 'flaw' (Actually, we happened to agree with Google on this point as
the very first sentence in our story says that this would not really be considered a flaw). Ms. Porter ended up
giving in to Google's request. The word 'massive' was removed from the headline and the word flaw was put inside inverted commas.
"For the people asking how the story was amended: Despite the fact that Google refused to comment on the record, I was asked to change the headline (both the homepage headline and SEO headline inside the story), as well as the standfirst and lead (first paragraph). Google's issue was with the use of the word 'flaw.' Apparently a system that is designed to share users information with developers without their knowledge or permission and without explicitly saying so in any terms of service is not considered to be a flaw."-Claire Porter, author, News.com.au
source:
AppleInsider
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