Posted on 02/10/2006 12:12:17 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
Consumers Should Not Use New Google Desktop
San Francisco - Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" 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.
"Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google's search logs, it's shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "Unless you configure Google Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google will have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files, and whatever other text-based documents the Desktop software can index. The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business, and in many cases you wouldn't even be notified in time to challenge it. Other litigants—your spouse, your business partners or rivals, whoever—could also try to cut out the middleman (you) and subpoena Google for your files."
The privacy problem arises because the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, 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. Google says it is not yet scanning the files it copies from your hard drive in order to serve targeted advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility, and Google's current privacy policy appears to allow it.
"This Google product highlights a key privacy problem in the digital age," said Cindy Cohn, EFF's Legal Director. "Many Internet innovations involve storing personal files on a service provider's computer, but under outdated laws, consumers who want to use these new technologies have to surrender their privacy rights. If Google wants consumers to trust it to store copies of personal computer files, emails, search histories and chat logs, and still 'not be evil,' it should stand with EFF and demand that Congress update the privacy laws to better reflect life in the wired world."
For more on Google's data collection:
http://news.com.com/FAQ+When+Google+is+not+your+friend/2100-1025_3-6034666.html?tag=nl http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/01/21/google_subpoena_roils_the_web http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/01/20/EDGEPGPHA61.DTL http://news.com.com/%20Bill+would+force+Web+sites+to+delete+personal+info/2100-1028_3-6036951.html
Contact:
Kevin Bankston
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
bankston@eff.org
"Your files are our files...get over it!"
Maybe I need to short some more GOOG at tomorrow's open...
"Google loves you" ping...
Sound like good advise to me.
That's gotta be the dumbest "feature" ever invented. Or that ever will be invented.
Who's stupid enough to do that? democRats?
Absolutely.
It would be nice, though, if Hillary's laptop had that feature enabled, wouldn't it?
I'm sure Marty can scare up some of "her" photos with his current resources.
That should be enough to convince anyone not to use this feature.
There's an internet sucker born every nanosecond, I fear...
I noticed you picked your time frame very carefully in your graph.
Try this one http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GOOG&t=2y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
Of course I picked my time frame carefully! If you ever intend to short a stock, you'd better do so, too! (grin)
In truth, though, I'm not shorting Google now; the time to short would've been last week...
Actually your statement reflects a sever short sightedness and lack of understanding of the huge need for something like this.
Imagine a company that has several field offices. Imagine trying to find that lost order for 4 million dollars worth of whatever you sell. I arrived in the Denver office, was scanned to pdf and Emailed somewhere and that's the last anyone ever saw it. OR Imagine trying to find that second set of books that your thieving accountant is keeping somewere on your computers.
There IS NO COMPETING technology for corporate wide indexing. None.
If Google could either encrypt the data with keys stored only on YOUR computer, or/and index only the words in the document (like it does with web pages) it could get around this objection and have another killer product.
EFF = Electronic ACLU
I bailed at 442.37. Not looking to get back in for a while. (Got in last time at 257.)
Nothing wrong with this feature as long as you know what you are doing. The vast majority do not, however.
Good ride...
If a position is sound, I support it; if not, I don't.
It's a question of how much control one has over what's indexed and what's stored on Google's servers. Most users will have neither the sophistication nor the inclination to try to deal with this question, I suspect.
"All your files are belong to us" ;)
I like that site and wasn't familiar with it. Thanks...
Oh yeah...
Are you able to borrow the stock you need to deliver if you short Google?
Its' worst than that...every picosecond ,its' perceived, "Oh!..It can't happen here, on my computer...not without the connivance of ChiCom/Google, Inc.
Are you able to borrow the stock you need to deliver if you short Google?
My bumper sticker reads: "I short naked...pray for me!"
Creepy, isn't it?.....:)
It sure is. I've been reading various pages on the site for the past half hour or so. Very creepy, indeed...
The same sorts of people who despise Linda Tripp think the world of a former NSA employee who reveals that our government is actually trying to track down so-called Americans who are collaborating with Al Qaida.
Yeah, a nanosecond here, a picosecond there and in almost no time at all we're talking about almost no time at all...
Too cumbersome. I use Homeland Security as my ISP, thus eliminating the middleman.
That site is from PIR, Inc.
http://www.namebase.org/ was always fun too
(laughing!)
Hadn't seen that one, either...
Weird.
[are my iPod music downloads being monitored, I wonder?]....:))
What feature?
Actually my question is, is the Google toolbar as bad as the Google desktop software in storing info from computers?
Yes, I saw it trying to load on my PC at home and deleted the ******.
I have now set up my personal computer firewall (Zonealarm) to block any access from ip address http://64.233.161.99 which is Google. I set up both of my web sites to deny access to the Google search engine.
I think, that the Google desktop is another program which runs in the background. Don't install it. But if you do, block any access the program wants to the internet by using your firewall,
..gotten to where I just don't trust a search engine having to do with Google, Yahoo or Microsoft...entirely too devious..like the fox guarding the henhouse.
I'm using Teoma..works for me.
Also, someone mentioned the Chicoms.
Anyone want to bet they were the ones who put Google up to this, the better to root out dissidents?
You see, one of Clinton's shills was trashing poor Paula Jones by talking about what you could do by waving around a $100 bill in a trailer park. He didn't realize the same thing applied even more forcefully to some corporations.
"Don't be evil" indeed. "Beware of the Dark Side" is more like it. These people must be channeling Bill Gates.
No cheers, unfortunately.
I'm not taking any chances. I deleted the toolbar from IE. In Firefox (which I use by default) I found an extension at Firefox that allows me to delete search engines in the search window. I installed it, reopened Firefox, then deleted both Google and Yahoo from the list of search engines available.
I also have deleted, then blocked, Google cookies in both IE & Firefox.
I'm on WinNT4.0 SP6 using the Google tool bar. No problems whatsoever until I tried solving my daughter's PC virus problems by checking out web sites she visited. I then got the same, very intermittent problem I saw on her PC. 2 or 3 times a week, I lose my desktop image with the background going white and various Google related messages and a hot link to FIX the desktop. The hot link works but the question is what caused it? The daily AVG virus scan come back clean! Ad-Aware and Spy-bot come back clean also.
Dude, that's "BAN BAIT" -- I'd like to stick around, thankyewverymuch.
..and soon, not a googleplex to be found. :^/
If you have nothing to hide....
We are at war....
Only Terrorists would object....
It's for The Children.
Large corporations which need this can set it up on their SANs and VPNs. Small companies, like mine, can automate backups onsite and carry backups of critical documents on USB drives; mine's worn around my neck. All my company's critical correspondence, order data and financials are with me at all times, in addition to the rolling system backups.
I wouldn't even put sensitive data in Gmail, much less upload all my docs there.
Man, if this is my company, we got some very serious problems way beyond Google's power to solve.
I think I can come up with a much better method of not losing track of $4 million orders.
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