A high-profile privacy watchdog group has a terse warning for business and consumers: Do not use the new version of Google Desktop.
The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation said a new feature added to Google Desktop on Feb. 9 is a serious privacy and security risk because of the way a user's data is stored on Google's servers.
The new "Share Across Computers" feature stores Web browsing history, Microsoft Office documents, PDF and text files on Google's servers to allow a user to run remote searches from multiple computers, but, according to the EFF, this presents a lucrative target to malicious hackers.
"[We urge] 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 EFF said in a statement.
Google says it has to store the data on its own servers to deal with situations when one of a user's computers may be turned off or otherwise be offline when new or updated items are indexed on a different machine. "We store this data temporarily on Google Desktop servers and automatically delete older flies, and your data is never accessible by anyone doing a Google search," the Web search giant insists.
SOURCE:EXTREME TECH
BRAVO!! MY 100TH POST
DON'T USE GOOGLE DESTOP
Linear Mode
