The Electronic Frontier Foundation Thursday blasted a new feature on Google's Desktop Search product, which allows users to search their home computers from any computer. The group said that Google's caching of users' hard drives renders them vulnerable to subpoenas.
The new feature, dubbed "Search Across Computers," caches users' text contents--including PDFs, spreadsheets, Word documents, e-mails, and other documents--on Google's servers, so that users can search them from any computer with an Internet connection. The EFF, however, claims that the feature puts users' data at risk. "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," the foundation said in a statement.
The new feature, dubbed "Search Across Computers," caches users' text contents--including PDFs, spreadsheets, Word documents, e-mails, and other documents--on Google's servers, so that users can search them from any computer with an Internet connection. The EFF, however, claims that the feature puts users' data at risk. "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," the foundation said in a statement.
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