December 18th, 2008

Microsoft and Yahoo wait for Google to increase privacy

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 5:17 pm

Categories: Google, Privacy

Tags: Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc., Privacy, Data Retention, Microsoft Corp., Garett Rogers

Yahoo has significantly cut the length of time they keep personal data on file — they have agreed to scrub all their data (remove all identifiable user information) within 90 days of its collection. This comes directly after Microsoft’s offer to keep this data for only 6 months if both Yahoo and Google promised to do the same.

Google currently only scrubs their data after 9 months — something that Microsoft and Yahoo have likely identified as a crack they may be able to squeeze into. The problem for Microsoft and Yahoo is that Google probably doesn’t need to listen to Microsoft’s proposal, as the majority of Google users simply don’t have a problem with their data retention policy. Be it wise or not, this is one of those issues that only a handful of people (relatively speaking) actually care about.

If Google does anything, they should give their users the ability to see exactly what information they know about you, and an easy way to delete all or portions of it. Users should also have the ability to set their own data retention limit to appease even the the most concerned users.

What do you think Google should do? Should they take Microsoft’s offer, and agree to scrub their data after only 6 months instead of 9?

November 17th, 2008

Consumer Watchdog overreacts about Gmail

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 5:15 pm

Categories: Google, Privacy

Tags: Message, Google Inc., Google Gmail, Consumer Watchdog, ConsumerWatchdog, E-mail Providers, Cloud Computing, Security, Internet, Garett Rogers

ConsumerWatchdog.org isn’t too impressed with the way Gmail works — they are convinced that Google isn’t respecting the privacy of their users.

Click here to watch the video

Some things mentioned in the video may be concerning to some people, but everything mentioned can either be easily resolved yourself, or isn’t something that normal people should spend any time worrying about. Let’s discuss all the points that were put forth:

1) Gmail’s Auto-Save feature is sending your messages over the wire in plain text without your knowledge. Just as they say, your message is definitely being sent to Google in plain-text format by default. Most people don’t care about this happening, but for those that do, there’s an option in your settings to enable SSL. Doing this resolves this issue, and make it impossible for anyone to sniff your packets.

2) Chrome Shortcuts remove all traces of a browser making Gmail look like a traditional Windows application. As a user, you can’t tell if a website is using SSL when you are in this mode — that means that there’s no way to tell if the information you are sending over the wire is secure or not. This is true, but again, it’s not that big of a deal? Before creating the shortcut, concerned users should be responsible enough to check if the website is using SSL.

3) Google reads your email so it can show you relevant ads. This one has been brought up before, and each time I hear it, I chuckle a bit. People speak of Google as an entity that has human emotion and comprehension, and will tell on you for saying something bad about someone. News flash, Google isn’t a human — messages Google reads aren’t going to be spread around to your friends because of something embarrassing you said to someone. This is no privacy issue here — sorry ConsumerWatchdog.

4) There is no way for someone who sends you a message to opt out of their messages being analyzed by Google. Are you serious? The point they tried to make was that the author of an incoming message does not know that their email will be opened by Google, and that the recipient will be advertised to according to the contents of the message.

The ConsumerWatchdog fails to understand that messages sent to a Gmail user do not belong to the sender, but the recipient. Once it leaves the outbox of the sender, they do not have control of their message anymore — similar to how you lose control of a letter once it’s been sent with snail mail.

If this is all they can come up with for privacy concerns, they must be pretty desperate for attention. What do you think about privacy in Gmail — don’t hold back! Let’s hear your comments in the TalkBack!

October 15th, 2008

Google opens up your profile to search engines

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 5:01 pm

Categories: Google, Privacy

Tags: Profile, Google Inc., Search Engine, Search, Garett Rogers

Google has been letting people create profiles for a while now — you can see mine here, and you can create yours here. Until today, your public profile that you created has remained hidden from search engines.

Just about a half hour ago, Google added a new line into their robots.txt file which makes all those profiles (or at least 50,000 of them) crawlable by search engines. The new entry tells search engines to use “http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/profiles-sitemap.xml” as a sitemap. The sitemap looks something like this:


http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/sitemap-000.txt
2008-10-15

http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/sitemap-001.txt
2008-10-15


In that file, you can see it lists 30 static files — each of which contain a whole slew of URL’s to public profiles. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for these profiles to show up in Google search results — and when they do, how they look. I’m sure Google will be creating a special OneBox to show “people results” at some point.

Do you have any problems with Google allowing search engines to index your profile? Let’s hear what you think in the Talk Back!

October 11th, 2008

Google ignores some reported security problems?

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:50 pm

Categories: Google, Privacy

Tags: Google Inc., Security, Garett Rogers

Aviv Raff posted a public disclosure of a minor security risk that could be a major problem if used in conjunction with another type of problem. It’s true that his discovery isn’t really one that (by itself) should keep you up at night, but it’s one that I’m surprised Google’s security team hasn’t squashed it yet due to its potential when used with other vulnerabilities.

I’ll leave you to read Aviv’s description of the problem he discovered, but I’d like to discuss something a little more important. This problem was discovered, and reported to Google six months ago. Google’s official response was “we’ll look into it”, and nothing has happened. Security problems need to be fixed in a timely fashion, especially when we’re talking about a company that is slowly becoming the hub of all personal information.

Granted, this isn’t a huge problem right now, and they’ve probably got bigger fish to fry, however I have also experienced this recently when a vulnerability I found was reported to Google. It was reported well over 2 months ago, and still hasn’t been fixed. What I discovered has privacy implications, and if it’s a “feature” rather than a bug, I think someone should have a talk with the product planners.

I’m not going to disclose the problem yet, but if someone from Google in the security department is reading this, I’d encourage you to send me an email.

September 13th, 2008

Google wants your Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL contacts

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 10:42 pm

Categories: Google, Privacy

Tags: Google Inc., MSN Hotmail, America Online Inc., Yahoo! Inc., E-mail Providers, Internet, Garett Rogers

A Googling Google reader noticed that their Sandbox iGoogle page had a new link on it today — unfortunately, subsequent attempts to see it were fruitless. He says the link was something like “Find friends that are using iGoogle”, and clicking it took him to an interesting page.

This “Chat Import” page asks you to provide your Hotmail, Yahoo or AOL username and password so that it can scrape all your contacts. From there, it can figure out if any of them already have Google accounts — and if they do, it will let you import them directly into your Chat list. Don’t worry though, Google says they won’t store any of your credentials for those other services without your permission.

What do you think about Google asking for usernames and passwords for other services?

[Thanks Martin!]

September 11th, 2008

Google's 9 month log anonymization a farce?

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 7:33 pm

Categories: Google, Privacy

Tags: Google Inc., IP, IP Address, Cookie, Garett Rogers

Google has said that it is now “anonymizing” their log files after just 9 months instead of the previous 18 — that sounds great to people concerned about their privacy and take things at face value (I’m pretty sure not many people fit into both of those categories). Chris Soghoian definitely isn’t. He saw something in Google’s announcement that he wanted clarification on, and he got an interesting response.

After nine months, we will change some of the bits in the IP address in the logs; after 18 months we remove the last eight bits in the IP address and change the cookie information. We’re still developing the precise technical methods and approach to this, but we believe these changes will be a significant addition to protecting user privacy…. It is difficult to guarantee complete anonymization, but we believe these changes will make it very unlikely users could be identified…. We hope to be able to add the 9-month anonymization process to our existing 18-month process by early 2009, or even earlier.

The problem, according to Chris, is that without anonymized cookie data, scrubbed IP addresses are useless. Google said in their reply to Chris that cookies will remain in tact for the full 18 months, making the 9 month scrubbing a useless publicity stunt.

When you search on Google today, they record the IP address of your computer (ie. 24.72.52.65) and place a unique “cookie” (a very random sequence of characters that only you get) on your computer. Google can then read the cookie for up to 18 months and match it up to you in their records.

What used to happen
After 18 months, Google would take your IP address, and remove the numbers after the last decimal — in our case, making it 24.72.52.xxx. Thankfully, Google then also forgets the cookie information that it can use to identify you.

Now what happens
After 9 months, Google will take your IP address, and remove only some of the numbers after the decimal — in our case, something like 24.72.52.6xx. Unfortunately, Google continues to remember your cookie information and therefore can still identify you.

The good news is that Google hasn’t yet implemented the new anonymization process (they’ve got 9 months), so there’s still a chance to make it better if we raise enough awareness. What do you think of Google’s new rules?

July 5th, 2008

Google trying to take privacy seriously

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 4:47 pm

Categories: Privacy

Tags: Google Inc., Privacy, Social Security, Security, Government, Garett Rogers

This week was a very interesting week as far as Google and privacy goes. First, a burglary (the same on that affected CNET earlier last month) was confirmed to have affected all Google employees hired before December 31, 2005. There’s nothing Google could have done about it, but it’s definitely a blow for those involved. Employee records contain everything from names to social security numbers, and unfortunately, Google’s were stored unencrypted on the stolen computers. Google has offered to cover the cost for a one year subscription to a credit monitoring service.

On top of this problem, Google was ordered by a judge to hand over terabytes of YouTube logs to Viacom in the lawsuit against Google. Even though this is clearly something that affects the privacy of anyone that has ever used YouTube, it gets worse.

Most people would consider the disclosure of which IP addresses watched which videos a privacy nightmare, and I’m sure that would be the grounds Google will likely try to oppose the decision on. Unfortunately, Google’s own words on their Public Policy blog were referenced in the judges order to hand over data.

“the IP addresses recorded by every website on the planet without additional information should not be considered personal data, because these websites usually cannot identify the human beings behind these number strings.” — Google Privacy Policy Blog

I’m pretty sure there is a big shoe sticking out of their mouth right about now.

The most recent Google/privacy related news was that Google put a link to their privacy policy directly on their homepage — it used to be that you needed to dig around to find it. I’m glad Google did that, but does it really deserve this gigantic explanation on the Official Google Blog, especially since they were likely pressured into it anyway?

What do you think about the most recent privacy related issues coming out of Google in the last week?

May 5th, 2008

Has Google mastered time travel?

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 5:13 pm

Categories: Privacy

Tags: Google Inc., Desktops, Hardware, Garett Rogers

It appears that Google has mastered time travel — either that, or the privacy policy for Google Desktop in the UK doesn’t take effect until later this year.

Of course, it could just be a mistake, but i doubt it.

[Thanks Denny]

December 26th, 2007

People demand their public feeds back from Google

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:08 am

Categories: Google Reader, Privacy

Tags: Google Inc., Friend, E-mail Providers, Internet, Garett Rogers

Google introduced a new feature to Google Reader on December 14th that lets you view your friends publicly shared items — little did Google know, that feature somehow ruined Christmas for someone, gave away trade secrets, violated everyone’s privacy and created a huge anti-reader bandwagon that has plenty of room for passengers. People are massively upset that their public feeds are being publicized — to their friends.

I think the problem here, as ParisLemon puts it, is Google’s system for determining if someone is a “friend”. Currently, someone is labeled as your friend if you have them in your Gmail contact list and you have talked with them using Google Talk. Those two things together can almost certainly determine if you know someone well, but it’s a bad way to tell if someone is your friend.

I honestly don’t understand why so many people are angry about this feature — sure, nobody had to “opt in”, but people should know that when they make something “public” (share something that clearly states it’s being made “public”), that you shouldn’t use it to do anything “private”?

“Your shared items are publicly accessible.
They are available as a page at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/11452057738876564749 (and there’s a feed too)” — on the shared items page

I’d like to get a true sense of what people think about this feature. Please take the poll!

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November 9th, 2007

Thoughts on Google accounts

Posted by Garett Rogers @ 3:32 pm

Categories: Privacy

Tags: Google Inc., E-mail Providers, Viruses And Worms, Security, Internet, Garett Rogers

Today Philipp posed an interesting and scary question. What if one day you woke up to a phone call from a friend telling you of a severe Google security hole that has left many Google accounts vulnerable. Worried, you try logging into your Gmail to make sure everything is ok — and it’s not. You can’t get in.

This is a scary, but plausible scenario. Account hijacking can happen anywhere, not just to Google, but it is worrisome to think about the type and amount of data you store on Google’s servers.

I would like to ask the same question to my readers. If you woke up to find that your Google account was hijacked — what would you do?