Not for me. They just said "The following people have been added automatically..." At least, I did not manually add anyone and I had a bunch of people added.

The weird part is that of my 6 followers, 2 are people I've never heard of before. One is following 20 and the other 77 and they don't look like spammers, just complete strangers with no reason to have found and followed me.

Had the same impression, but searching my mail for their names helped. They were guys like a free software developer whom I had sent feedback about his stuff, people from newsgroups I had exchanged some unimportant e-mails with, etc.

I am pretty sure you are mistaken. This is the prompt everyone got when they went to buzz for the first time: http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/goog...

This is also shown in the Google buzz demo video.

Responsibility lies on you when you decide not to edit the follow users and check privacy setting when its right in front of you the first time. The only way forward is to click OK, thats what you did like everyone else who is complaining and going ra ra about privacy.

Look, people aren't making this stuff up. I'm not sure of the circumstances yet (maybe just the first batch?), but there are a lot of people who were automatically added to Buzz without a prompt.

Upon signing in to Gmail, I was directed to some sort of Buzz landing page / prompt. I deliberately chose 'no / continue what I was doing'. (I wasn't aware of any problem, so I didn't make a point of memorizing the presentation.)

Upon proceeding in to Gmail, I found that I was participating in Buzz, with IIRC 14 follows.

My more general reaction to this situation, including a similar, serious security implication for a close family member, I'll comment on elsewhere in this thread.

Briefly: You fucked up bigtime, Google. The people truly responsible for this need to be terminated.

Me too. I just logged into my gmail account (which I don't use) and got a buzz page. I deliberately did not click the huge "Okay" button but instead the tiny "Nah", but then there was still a buzz tab and I had to click the very not obvious link at the bottom to turn it off.

This is the first time I have seen the image in that page. No, I did not get that prompt.

I didn't watch the Google Buzz demo video, because I'm not interested in Buzz. I shouldn't have to watch something I'm not interested in to find out how not to take part in what I'm not interested in. It also took me quite a while to figure out where the turn off button was - since its not in the normal settings, where I would expect to find such things.

You didn't actually look at the image you posted did you. It says quite clearly that google autofollowed people. The only button that is there is an "OK". I just clicked on buzz for the first time and I got this: http://imgur.com/ji5lx

There were already messages there. They were almost all about how to turn off buzz.

The argument is not so much that you were auto followed (which only happens when you click the buzz tab on gmail) but that you didn't get a chance to do anything about it.

Clearly you have option to edit your followers list and change privacy setting (which was the complain I was referring to). If you choose not to do anything about that and ignore the prompt and go ahead click OK. Should you not take some responsibility for it? I am not denying that google auto following is not in bad form I am just pointing out that changing/editing it is extremely easy and right in front of you.

As for turning off buzz. It is at the bottom of your gmail window. One click away, but not obvious.

I don't want to change privacy settings, I just don't want buzz. Where is the "cancel" button? Google should be smart enough to not do opt-out.

Nope - I never configured anything and had about 25 followers and was following 25 people - 2/3 of which were just people I had had to email in bursts who I didn't know. Seriously flawed execution here...

You're wrong. All sorts of people were following me, and me following them, just by clicking the Buzz link.

They switched to that when there were complaints. Lucky people like the poster of this blog entry got to be google's guinea pigs so they could figure out that they should have that screen.

Why is he being down-voted? (-3 at the moment)

Oh right, "we don't like his comment, let's get rid of it." Jesus, people, behave.

He's making his case based on his knowledge of the situation and he's doing so in an educated manner.

Me, personally, I'm in his same situation. I can't understand how people got automatically added to that Buzz thing. The link appeared in my Gmail account and I never clicked it, NEVER. I just turned it off when I learned how.

Because he's being sanctimonious and judgmental ("Responsibility lies on YOU") while having his facts completely wrong.

Because he's saying things which are obviously not true and could be verified as not true with a minimal amount of external research (by, for example, reading the text of the screenshot he posted).

When I set my one gmail account up it did not prompt me, all my contacts were added. However, I went to look at another account I have and it did not add the contacts from that. Not sure if it is a timing issue, as I set my first account up within 12 hours of them releasing Buzz and waited till yesterday after hearing all the complaints to see what it looked like in my other account and if I maybe missed something the first time. I think they may have either fixed the issue or are working on fixing it.

If you clicked that link, you have not actually disabled your public profile.