untangling_the_web

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What are the privacy and security concerns surrounding desktop search tools? I
think Wendy Boswell, the editor of About.com's Web Search Guide, sums up the
current state of affairs not only with Google Desktop but with all the major desktop
search tools when she writes, "In a very small nutshell, the trouble with Google's
Desktop Search is that when you are hooked up to a network of other computers,
there are holes in Google's Desktop Search that exploit already known holes in
Internet Explorer, and these two just basically open up your computer to any
malicious hacker that feels like a bit of snooplnq.'?" Boswell points out that she uses
Google Desktop Search on her own computer, but only because her computer is not
networked to any others and she is has anti-virus/security/firewall protection, another
backup firewall, and a broadband firewall router. And, I would add, I suspect she
knows a lot more than the average user about personal computer security.
The fundamental issue with all the desktop search applications is a familiar one:
balancing a very useful tool with a potential loss of privacy. "Desktop search
undermines your personal security. Every time you use it, your life's an open book.
Or, in this case, an open hard drive.,,212 It is precisely the power and scope of
desktop search tools that make them so potentially dangerous. Unlike kludgy old
Microsoft Windows Explorer, which can take many minutes to search a large hard
drive, desktop search tools index a hard drive upon installation and catalog the
results to make retrieval very quick, usually within seconds. And desktop search
tools can and do find pretty much everything on your computer, even the cache of
web pages where you might have entered credit card information, for example.
Which helps explain why putting desktop search tools on networked computers may
not a good idea at this time. In fact, many organizations have banned the installation
and use of Google Desktop, but some have discovered it came preloaded on new
computers, such as one state agency that found it preinstalled on its new Dell
desktops.i"
Google's Desktop 2.0 addressed some of these security issues. Google Desktop no
longer indexes or stores secure web pages or password-protected files, and the
index can be encrypted. The corporate version also allows network administrators to
210 "About Google Desktop," Google.com, (14 November
2006).
211 Wendy Boswell, "Are You Using Google Desktop Search?", About.com, 20 January 2005,
(14 November 2006).
212 David Sheets, "Desktop Search Threatens Your Privacy," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 21 January
2005, (article no longer available).
213 C.J. Kelly, "Google Desktop - Yet Another Security Frightener," Computerworld, 28 December
2006, (5 February
2007).
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