On buzz.com there are two kinds of users: shy and outgoing. You can decide which one you are. In a nutshell, here’s how it works:
Outgoing users definitely get the best experience from buzz.com. They share not just their basic information (name, profile photo and location) but also their questions and recommendations with the entire buzz.com community. If you’re outgoing, it’s easier for others to find you, and to make new friends.
Shy users can use the whole site, but will get a less awesome experience. Their name, photo and location are visible (if they provide them) on some parts of the site, but their questions and recommendations are displayed anonymously to people who aren’t their friends. If you’re shy, your friends can still see the questions you ask and the recommendations you make.
Note that anonymity is not privacy. It might be possible for someone to accurately determine that you are the author of a particular piece of information, based on other contextual information. For example, if you are friends with only two other people in your community, and you ask a question that they then answer, it would not be difficult for a fourth person to surmise that you asked the question. For this reason, you should not use buzz.com to share information that requires a guarantee of secrecy.
Whether you’re outgoing or shy, we never, ever share your email, phone, age, time zone, or notification settings without your explicit consent.
If you use buzz.com to favorite businesses or recommend them to friends, we may send you offers from those businesses. We’ll always make it easy for you to opt-out of any such offers. You’re always in control of the information you receive from us.
The following table gives a complete breakdown of how friends and others can see the information you share on buzz.com.
| Information Provided | I’m Shy | I’m Outgoing | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friends | Anyone | Friends | Anyone | |
| Question | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Text of Question | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| First Name | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Last Name | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Profile Photo | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Answer | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Recommendation | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Comment Text | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| First Name | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Last Name | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Profile Photo | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Favorite | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Recommendation | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| First Name | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Last Name | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Profile Photo | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Comment | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Comment Text | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| First Name | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Last Name | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Profile Photo | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Tags | No | No | No | No |
| Comment Text | No | No | No | No |
| First Name | No | No | No | No |
| Last Name | No | No | No | No |
| Profile Photo | No | No | No | No |
| Who I'm Friends With | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| My Friends Appear on My Profile | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| I Appear on My Friends’ Profiles | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Number of Friends I Have | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Profile Info | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| First Name | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Last Name | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Location | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Profile Photo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| No | No | No | No | |
| Gender | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Age | No | No | No | No |
| Notification Settings | No | No | No | No |
| Social Networks Connected at Your Request | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Aggregate Views | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| My Questions | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| My Favorites | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| My Other Activity | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
If you are a Facebook user, we allow you to use Facebook Connect to link your Facebook account to your buzz.com account. When you do so, your Facebook account identifier will be visible to users of buzz.com. We will not display additional information about your Facebook account to users of buzz.com, without your permission. We will ask for your permission to publish items to Facebook. You are not required to grant this permission, and if you do, you may revoke it at any time.
We ask for the following pieces of profile information: first name, last name, location, profile photo, email, phone, gender, age, and time zone. With the exception of your first name, email and age (required to verify you meet our minimum age restriction), any of these pieces of information can be left blank. You are not required to enter your complete (or accurate) first name; you may do so at your discretion. Your gender may be shared in the form of personal pronouns (e.g. "his" or "her").
Friendships are mutual. We will not automatically make you friends with another user, except when another person accepts your invitation to join buzz.com. As with other social networks, buzz.com may suggest you as a friend to another user, based on information you have provided. But those suggestions will carry no other information other than the information listed above; the same visibility controls will apply. You will have the ability to accept or reject, at your discretion, any requests for friendship that you receive. If you accept the request for friendship, that information will be visible to others. If you reject it, that information will not be visible to other users, nor will the requests for friendship that you make be visible to other users of the site (except the person to whom you send the request).
