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The Google Risk?

GOOGLE SEARCH TOOL A PRIVACY RISK

People who use public or workplace computers for e-mail, instant messaging and Web searching have a new privacy risk to worry about: Google's free new tool that indexes a PC's contents for quickly locating data. Ref. Source

Risk Google The

I havent installed any of Googles utilities, and now I wont! I use the Yahoo companion toolbar, and place Google.com as a favorite link, so if I need to search, I just go to the Google site and do my searches there. I feel comfortable enough with the pc to find files and such without having to rely on Google to do it for me.

The Google Risk? Gaming Video & Issues Computer

I disagree with the article. Google search isn't a privacy risk because it doesn't have any magical ability to access any files your user account cannot access. Besides, the strongest argument in the article -- google search being used on a public computer -- it's far easier just to put a keylogger on such a computer to capture usernames and passwords, as google search can't index your keystrokes.

Also, I *really* like Picasa. It's great for organizing lots of little graphics clippings that are floating about random places on my HD

Risk Google The

The argument in the article only applies to the special utilities in google toolbar. you have the option to install them or not, and it tells you that data will be sent about your PC if you choose this option. All you have to do is not choose it and no information is sent. They aren't being sneaky about it in anyway at all. I actually have the google toolbar installed, my firewall would tell me if it was trying to access the web. Its not, and its not piggy backing IE either because its a pluggin for my firefox browser.

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Toolbar? Thought we were talking about https://desktop.google.com/

My mistake I think. The original CNN article seems to have vanished, though. Would you happen to have a link to it?

Edited: auroris on 25th Mar, 2005 - 8:38am

The Google Risk?

We are talking about Desktop Search.

Here is a review from PCWorld:
https://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118201,00.asp

Here is someone's review of the whole install process and how it works:
https://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/sriram/arc...0/14/28658.aspx

A link that points to a page that says we do not have much to worry about:
https://netsecurity.about.com/od/secureyour.../a/aa102904.htm

The Google Risk

Well, the average user doesn't read the notices that tell them such things. I think, it is likely that the developers at Google are quite aware of this fact and are taking advantage of it. Users at my office are forever, inadvertantly agreeing to such stuff. They simply choose to install the product, they don't realize all that goes along with it.

The Google Risk Computer Issues & Video Gaming

I personally have installed and used the Desktop search tool from Google and found it actually a rather nice edition to my other utilities. I do not believe that there is any reason why Google, if able, would really care what I have on my machine. Not would anyone else for that matter. I can see this being somewhat of an issue on a shared machine just for the indexing cache within it but in every day use on a personal computer I see no harm or foul.

Offtopic but, But! I do not and would not endorse any product onto a machine used for business purposes without a much more stringent investigation into the workings of the product. Yet I have always been fond of Google's utilities and have yet to find any major flaw in any of them.