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Google Desktop, the Worst Security Threat in the History of Humankind

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, December 28, 2006
17 years ago3,262 views

OMG! OMG! It's a nightmare. Google Desktop, the software that lets you search your PC and it's preloaded on new Dell PCs is a "security frightener".

"My state agency's intrusion- detection systems were showing some undesirable activity on our network. Upon investigation, we found that several desktop systems were communicating with Google via Google Desktop. I ran a network security scan and found at least 50 computers set up to do this."

On further investigation, our security expert discovered that Google Desktop has a feature called "search across computers", that's disabled by default.

Read more from our security guru: http://www.techworld.com/security/features/index.cfm?featureid=3066&pagtype=all

Mambo [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Some people are just so ignorant.

Mysterius [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I was wondering what all the fuss was about, until I read that article. Now I'm convinced that Google is EV1L!!! Why, how could they be so unprincipled as to leave possible security vulnerabilities on their product, even if they're disabled by default, with lots of clear warnings?!? And they don't remove deleted files from the index! Why didn't Google think of the government agencies that might not want this, instead of the consumers who routinely use it?

Seriously, the techie who left Google Desktop on the Dell computers by default should have thought a bit more about the matter, though. Google Toolbar, Picassa, and Google Earth or such are fine, but Google Desktop *might* raise concerns in a government environment, you know.

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

errr, post from back in February 2006 [ http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-02-09.html#n55]
so why kick all this up again now, I thought there was a long discussion about it before but I couldn't find the right page.

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