micha_bravo
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# Posted: 11 Feb 2006 10:22
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Special Super Secret Deputy Agent Scorger has uncovered information about how Google Desktop is a threat to your pc security.
According to Special Super Secret Deputy Agent Scorger, the software is so incredibly adept at performing it's duties that it can also lead to security breaches. In particular, his report mentions a new feature of the software called, "Search Across Computers".
After some very dangerous undercover work, Special Super Secret Deputy Agent Scorger has learned that this new feature will: Store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.
The issue is complicated by the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, which gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers—much less privacy than the legal protections for the same information when it's on your computer at home. And even that lower level of legal protection could disappear if Google uses your data for marketing purposes.
A follow up investigation also revealed another classified report, dated: 10-15-2004, about the desktop search function coded into the google software...
Google Desktop Search might just be too good. Using the new software, I was able to bypass user names and passwords that secure Web-based e-mail programs and view personal messages sent and received on public PCs.
Using Google's new software on a shared computer at the Google booth at the Digital Life trade show floor I was able to easily search for, find, and read private Yahoo e-mail sent on the computer by previous users earlier in the day.
*classified*, Google's director of consumer Web products, told me she wasn't surprised. "This is not a bug, rather a feature," she says. Google always intended people to be able to index and search Web-based e-mail viewed and composed on PC, she says. Google Desktop Search is not intended to be used on computers that are shared with more than one person, she says.
On Behalf of Special Super Secret Deputy Agent Scorger,
this is the Uber-Receptionist Micha Bravo, reporting live from Intell HQ (aka, Kyp's closet),
wishing you a good night and a great tomorrow.
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