New "Google Groups" Netnews Service Mangles Messages + Privacy Issues

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: December 9, 2004 1:57:54 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: New "Google Groups" Netnews Service Mangles Messages + Privacy 
Issues


Dave,

When Google obtained the massive Usenet netnews archive some years
ago and became the de facto netnews repository via their "Google
Groups" service, there were concerns expressed that they might
attempt to assert ownership or otherwise leverage these materials,
most of which are at least in theory under the original copyright
control of their authors.

Google's new version of Google Groups appears to include a feature,
ostensibly one assumes for spam control, with significant potential
privacy and other serious problems (based upon my current
observations of how the system is operating).

Their new system is obscuring *all* e-mail addresses in *all*
netnews messages in the archive (including the vast numbers of
messages that do not originate within the Google environment and/or
that predate the existence of Google Groups).  This includes not
only the addresses of individual netnews item authors, but also all
e-mail addresses within the body of those messages including contact
addresses, list addresses, administration addresses, etc.

In order to reply to an article author (since you cannot see their
full address), you must now apparently create and login to a Google
account, then send your message to the author *through* the Google
system.

There is no way (that I can find) to restore any of the e-mail
addresses in the headers or bodies of these messages, including
items ported in from external mailing lists.  The "show original"
option simply provides an unparsed textual version -- but all e-mail
addresses are still mangled.  In some cases it might be possible to
guess the missing portions of the addresses, but in most cases this
would not be possible.

The inability to read included e-mail addresses as intended by the
authors of these messages renders many of these messages utterly
worthless.

While I appreciate the desire of some netnews authors to hide their
e-mail addresses as an anti-spam measure, I for one have never
requested nor given permission for my address -- or the addresses I
include in netnews messages -- to be obscured or modified.  I prefer
to make it as simple as possible for persons to reply to me
*directly* -- not forcing them to send their e-mail through Google.
Additionally, sometimes having access to the full, obsolete e-mail
address on older messages is the simplest way to research the
current address for a given author.  When I include e-mail addresses
within a public message, it's with the intention that those
addresses be available for public use.

There's another issue also.  Google seems to have a habit of tying
together user cookies in ways that have significant privacy-related
implications.  It should not be necessary for a netnews reader to
submit to a Google login (which typically requires cookies) in order
to reply to a netnews item created by a netnews author outside of the
Google Groups system.

Google has taken an increasingly cavalier attitude toward privacy
issues, which many Web users seem willing to overlook even as
massive databases of user information are collected by Google itself,
without any apparent outside oversight or controls.  The new Google
Groups appears to be another step in this same direction.

Google provides some terrific search services.  But useful services
don't ameliorate the major problems and risks of so much potentially
personal user data being in the hands of a single private firm -- a
firm that could of course change its privacy policies at any time.
And what appears at this point to be their obscuring of the full
e-mail addresses in the headers and bodies of netnews messages, is
basically reducing many of those messages to uselessness.

If Google's main goal in this case is spam control, it's spam
control run amok.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () pfir org or lauren () vortex com or lauren () privacyforum org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
http://www.vortex.com
Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - 
http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, Fact Squad - http://www.factsquad.org
Co-Founder, URIICA - Union for Representative International Internet
                     Cooperation and Analysis - http://www.uriica.org
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://www.vortex.com/lauren-blog


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