while everyone is upset about google and privacy ...

I've been having issues with Google Chat for years. My issue is that I see people I don't want to see in Google Chat, and I'm pretty sure that people I don't want to see me can see me. Here are the settings I have for Chat:

Notice that I have checked "Only allow people that I've explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I'm online".

For each contact, the options for the "Show in Chat List" feature are "Auto", "Always", "Never", or "Block". For the contact "XXXXXXXXXXXX" below, I have selected "Never", and yet this person always shows up in my chat list anyways:

I get the same results with "Block" as well. Google Help tells me that the people who can see whether I'm online are those I can see, so I assume this means that random people I have exchanged emails with can see when I'm online?