New Zealand's Privacy Commissioner is one of several officials worldwide who are asking internet company Google to take more care with people's personal information.
Privacy commissioners from 10 countries have released a letter criticising the rollout of the Google Buzz social networking application in February this year.
The letter, which appears on the website of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, says the social networking tool assigned Google email users to groups of so-called followers based on who they most often corresponded with.
It says lists of the people who Google email users most often corresponded with were made public without warning.
Google made changes to the application after receiving complaints, but the letter says it is not an isolated case.
New Zealand commissioner Marie Shroff says Google was experimenting with the 179 million people who use G-mail and it seemed to be launching the product with the intention of fixing problems later.
"New Zealanders and people worldwide deserve better than than from a huge global company like Google, who have many resources."
Google New Zealand says it tries hard to be transparent about how it uses information and build protections into its products. It says changes to the application were made quickly, based on feedback from users.
However, Internet New Zealand says privacy must be considered before a service is released.
