It may have won rave reviews when it was launched last week, but some observers say Google鈥檚 free search engine for Windows PCs could undermine a user鈥檚 security.
Google Desktop Search (GDS) searches through the emails, documents and web pages on a PC鈥檚 hard drive as quickly as the Google search engine scours the web. It does this by spending a few hours indexing the drive鈥檚 contents, allowing it to perform much faster searches than a PC鈥檚 built-in search facility.
But PC World magazine has pointed out a security risk: GDS searches throw up snapshots of previously accessed web pages, including those normally protected by a password. These could include bank statements or, say, an Ebay account, allowing anyone else using the PC to see this sensitive data. This happens because GDS indexes the 鈥渃ached鈥� copies of web pages that browsers store.
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Google says the tool is not meant for use on a shared or public computer 鈥� and points out that users can instruct the program not to index secure pages. 鈥淕oogle doesn鈥檛 have a security problem,鈥� says cryptographer Bruce Schneier. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 fascinating is that the problem arises because Google is too successful at what it does.鈥�