Apparently, if you never used it at all, you can simply just click the "turn Buzz off" at the bottom of your Gmail safely. (If anyone knows otherwise, please alert me!) If you turned it on, I repeat: turning it off is not sufficient to protect yourself. Check out the link above.

Nope. Your name will still turn up on other people's lists unless you physically tell google you don't want it.

(so if I activated buzz and I had you as an email contact, you'd show up on my list even if you hadn't)