• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 5, 2010

Facing two class-action lawsuits and a potential Federal Trade Commission probe, Google is again tweaking Buzz in an attempt to address some of the privacy concerns raised by the feature. In its latest move, Google on Monday began asking Buzz users to confirm their privacy settings. The company also said it would post new YouTube videos demonstrating how to control the Buzz settings.

The move aims to cure some of the privacy problems posed by Google's initial launch of Buzz. When the company first rolled out the feature in February, it initially revealed information about the names of users' email contacts if users activated Buzz without changing the defaults.

Complaints soon surfaced that Buzz could reveal information that people would prefer to keep confidential, such as the names of journalists' sources.

Google made changes to Buzz within a few days, but critics like the Electronic Privacy Information Center say that the damage was already done.

Marc Rotenberg, EPIC's executive director, calls Google's latest move "helpful," but says it doesn't solve the problems created by Buzz. "Google initially disclosed a lot of personal information when it tried to turn Gmail users into Buzz converts," he says. "As is often the case with privacy, there's no way to undo a disclosure once it occurs."

He says Google should compensate users whose contacts were revealed.

EPIC filed a complaint in February asking the FTC to probe Buzz. That request recently drew the backing of 11 lawmakers, who joined in a request for an FTC investigation.

Buzz also spurred two potential class-action lawsuits -- one by law student Eva Hibnick and one by Rhode Island resident Adranik Souvalian.

Outgoing FTC member Pamela Jones Harbour recently added to the criticism. Speaking last month at an FTC roundtable about privacy, Harbour blasted Google for its "irresponsible conduct" in launching Buzz.