Originally published February 26 2006
Digital rights group says new Google poses security risk
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says a feature in the new version of Google Desktop allows personal data to be kept on its servers for up to 30 days. The feature is optional and only works with certain types of files.
The not-for-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation said a feature in the software allows Google to keep personal data on its servers for up to 30 days.
The feature that has raised concern - called Search Across Computers - lets users search their content on multiple computers.
Search Across Computers is optional and only works with certain types of files: web history (from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, and Mozilla), Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, PDF files and Text files in My Documents.
Google are trying to play down user's fears by encrypting the data, limiting access to it and holding it for a finite period, but some bloggers were worried data could be used against them - especially in light of the US government's request that Google, along with other internet companies, provide samples of searches, although Google has so far refused to cooperate.
Bloggers were undecided about the trade off.
"This is of course a touchy privacy subject, but the ability to search from a remote computer will be very welcome by some users," said Michael Arrington on Techcrunch in a blog entitled "Privacy is dead".
"The feature has a lot of potential...
More furore over the role of internet companies in China was sparked this week by fresh accusations about Yahoo's collaboration with communist police there.
Yahoo had already come under fire for its cooperation with authorities in the jailing of Shi Tao, an outspoken journalist who used Yahoo's email service and was jailed for 10 years last April.
However political critic Liu Xiaobo and Reporters Without Borders wrote that an earlier jailing of Li Zhi, a Chinese dissident, showed Yahoo been cooperating closely with authorities as early as 2003.
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