[IP] more on Google Me Not
Begin forwarded message:
From: Arik Hesseldahl <arik@xxxxxxxx>
Date: September 25, 2004 10:44:22 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Google Me Not
Reply-To: arik@xxxxxxxx
Here's the full text of that peice, for those still interested in it.
It can still be found for free (older magazine stuff falls behind a
password
protected archive after a certain amt of time has elapsed )
Arik
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/0816/102_print.html
On The Cover/Top Stories
Google Me Not
David Whelan, 08.16.04
Keeping confidential company data, or last weekend's cocktail party
photos,
away from search engines has become a growth business.
Type the right words into Google and up comes a trove of files
documenting an
acrimonious divorce between two business executives in San Diego.
Support
payments are calculated based on a $450,000 income. The husband accuses
the
wife of being a "shop-a-holic." He lists all her possessions, including
furs
worth $15,000. He's eager to finalize the divorce, because, as he
writes, he
was to marry again in June. All this is personal, private information,
no
longer even up on the original Web site, yet stored by Google for
everyone to
see, including friends, family and business associates who enter in the
divorced couple's names. When reached by phone, the husband says he is
"stunned
and shocked" that FORBES is interested in the matter at all.
As Web pages pile up like garbage in a landfill--1 billion will go up
this
year--sensitive, defamatory, confidential or embarrassing information is
increasingly finding its way into search results. The search industry is
raging, with $1.5 billion in revenue expected this year, up 150% from
2003.
Google's hotly anticipated $3.8 billion public offering is just around
the
corner. These riches are fueling a technological arms race among Yahoo,
Microsoft, Google and others whose software combs the Web constantly,
indexing
and storing all that you seek and ranking pages on their relevancy.
Search engines can store results in their "cache" for between a month
and
forever. As archiving improves, it will get harder to clean up what's
been
revealed. Rarely are leaks intentional: Somebody at work might post a
file on a
server to download at home, a wrongly configured server might make too
much of
a hard drive searchable or a Web site's password-protection might be
flimsy
enough to be accessible to search engines.
Google turned up detailed monthly expenses and employee salaries at the
National Speleological Society's site, caves.org. Says the group's
president
Scott Fee, "That ain't supposed to be up there."On the site of the Naval
Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. course materials are posted for
a class
on computer networking, including log-in files that could be of
interest to the
right hacker. All manner of personal correspondence, including
transcripts of
intimate instant-messaging exchanges, can be unearthed by search
engines.
Pamela Dixon, a privacy advocate at the World Privacy Forum, tells of an
elementary school teacher whose contract was not renewed with a Solano
County,
Calif. school district. This item appears in the minutes of a school
board
meeting. The announcement still comes up second upon Googling her name.
Dixon
says this has been devastating to the teacher's job search and that
attempts to
have the minutes taken down have so far been fruitless.
The 15-person staff at Craig's List, the popular community message
board, acts
as a rapid response team to keep people from harassing each other by
name
before one of the 150 search engines that index the site grabs the
offending
page. "Google, because of the way it stores things, can perpetuate a
problem,"
says founder Craig Newmark, who recently spent an afternoon chasing a
user who
wrote six nasty messages about a neighbor.
Search programs will be casting a wider net. Microsoft is tinkering
with a
technology called Stuff I've Seen that will pull results from the Web
along
with one's own computer and its network. (Microsoft claims this won't
make
personal files viewable by the public.) Google's Internet Explorer
toolbar
tracks the sites users surf and relays the addresses back to
headquarters. That
may be how Google results can turn up Web pages people naively consider
private, since they're not linked to or from anywhere. Google lets users
disable the feature:Just turn off the PageRank feature in the Options
menu.
Google recognizes the Web's power to publicize and offers Web masters a
simple
interface to remove their own pages from its index. (Type "remove" into
Google
to get started.) Other preventive measures include putting sensitive
info
behind password-protected walls and attaching so-called robot files to
Web
sites that tell search engines not to index a particular page or site.
All the
search engines follow these robot directives, which, while not a perfect
security solution, limit the entry points used by the bots and spiders
that
index the Web.
Foundstone, an Internet security company in Mission Viejo, Calif., has
developed a tool called SiteDigger that piggybacks on Google to point up
information leaks. Point it at a site or an entire domain, such as
.edu, and it
generates a list of e-mails, log-in screens, database errors and source
code,
all of which are classic ways to gain entry onto a server. The free
tool is a
nice way to attract business for Foundstone, and also a scary reminder
of how
much information is out there, says SiteDigger designer Mark Curphey.
Combing
through sites ending in .mil, the domain for the armed forces, a recent
Googling uncovered 17,300 Excel spreadsheets, 56,000 PowerPoint
presentations,
258,000 Word files and 681,000 Acrobat Reader files.
Search results can be rigged to gain a higher position; pranksters can
manipulate your page so that it shows up whenever someone Googles the
word
"jerk," a practice known as Google bombing. So why not do the opposite
to play
down bad publicity? Public relations firm Weber Shandwick employs a
search
expert in Irving, Tex. named Jeffrey Martin, whose specialty is advising
clients on how to bury bad news under rosier search results.
Systems integration company Science Applications International Corp. of
San
Diego offers a product called Open Source Monitoring that scans the Web,
newsgroups, Listservs and any other public forums for names and
trademarks.
Companies use it as an early warning system for hackers, stock
manipulators,
disgruntled employees and bad-mouthers. The program has helped
companies avoid
violent protests and direct police to ex-employees who make threats or
try to
leak confidential information, says Timothy Appleby, the project's chief
scientist.
Better archiving technologies are extending the shelf lives of data you
don't
want people to see. Google and its competitors save copies of Web pages
in a
database that makes the pages accessible even when links to the site
have been
taken down. These cached links are destroyed the next time Google
re-indexes
the Internet, anywhere from a day to a month. But an online service
called the
Wayback Machine at archive.org keeps records of old Web sites. You
never know
what's going to turn up there.
Like libraries, Google and its search rivals do not assume
responsibility for
the content that they catalog. But with lawsuits filed at the drop of a
hat,
search services should take note. In June Varian Medical Systems won a
case
against two former employees who defamed company executives online,
winning
$775,000 in damages in what's become a landmark Internet speech case. A
judge
ruled last year in New Hampshire that Docusearch, a purveyor of personal
information, could be sued for the death of a stalking victim whose
murderer
used its services. (The case was settled before trial.)
Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy famously said, "You already
have zero
privacy. Get over it." That's not quite true. You can fight back, up to
a
point.
--- David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
From: bill keeshen <keeshen@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: September 24, 2004 4:45:31 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Google Me Not
Reply-To: bill keeshen <keeshen@xxxxxxxxx>
Google Me Not
Keeping confidential company data, or last weekend's cocktail party
photos, away from search engines has become a growth business.
Type the right words into Google and up comes a trove of files
documenting an acrimonious divorce between two business executives in
San Diego. Support payments are calculated based on a $450,000 income.
The husband accuses the wife of being a "shop-a-holic." He lists all
her possessions, including furs worth $15,000. He's eager to finalize
the divorce, because, as he writes, he was to marry again in June. All
this is personal, private information, no longer even up on the
original Web site, yet stored by Google for everyone to see, including
friends, family and business associates who enter in the divorced
couple's names. When reached by phone, the husband says he is "stunned
and shocked" that FORBES is interested in the matter at all.
....
Like libraries, Google and its search rivals do not assume
responsibility for the content that they catalog. But with lawsuits
filed at the drop of a hat, search services should take note. In June
Varian Medical Systems won a case against two former employees who
defamed company executives online, winning $775,000 in damages in
what's become a landmark Internet speech case. A judge ruled last year
in New Hampshire that Docusearch, a purveyor of personal information,
could be sued for the death of a stalking victim whose murderer used
its services. (The case was settled before trial.)
Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy famously said, "You already
have zero privacy. Get over it." That's not quite true. You can fight
back, up to a point.
http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Forbes/2004/08/16/517843
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