Google Desktop Search: Security Threat?
It's a Feature Not a Bug Department: Looks like I spoke too soon. When I wrote about Google's Desktop search yesterday, I wondered in the back of my mind if there may be some sort of outcry over security just like the massive backlash that hit Goggle's Gmail for keyword advertising in email replies. These things seem inevitable. With nothing to back that and nothing I could tell from my own tests, I found the product innovative. But what a difference a day makes....if you are an idiot who uses a public computer to post email. Read on:

PC World's Tom Spring has an interesting piece on a potentital security threat he uncovered using Goggle Desktop. He wrote, "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.

"Marissa Mayer, 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. Whether or not Google intended this, I take great pause at knowing any e-mail I write or read on a PC with Google Desktop Search could be called up and read by a complete stranger."

Good to know. Read his whole commentary here.

Is it a feature?



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