more on Google Me Not

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Arik Hesseldahl <arik () arik org>
Date: September 25, 2004 10:44:22 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Google Me Not
Reply-To: arik () arik org

Here's the full text of that peice, for those still interested in it.
It can still be found for free (older magazine stuff falls behind a 
password
protected archive after a certain amt of time has elapsed )

Arik

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/0816/102_print.html

On The Cover/Top Stories
Google Me Not
David Whelan, 08.16.04

Keeping confidential company data, or last weekend's cocktail party 
photos,
away from search engines has become a growth business.
Type the right words into Google and up comes a trove of files 
documenting an
acrimonious divorce between two business executives in San Diego. 
Support
payments are calculated based on a $450,000 income. The husband accuses 
the
wife of being a "shop-a-holic." He lists all her possessions, including 
furs
worth $15,000. He's eager to finalize the divorce, because, as he 
writes, he
was to marry again in June. All this is personal, private information, 
no
longer even up on the original Web site, yet stored by Google for 
everyone to
see, including friends, family and business associates who enter in the
divorced couple's names. When reached by phone, the husband says he is 
"stunned
and shocked" that FORBES is interested in the matter at all.

As Web pages pile up like garbage in a landfill--1 billion will go up 
this
year--sensitive, defamatory, confidential or embarrassing information is
increasingly finding its way into search results. The search industry is
raging, with $1.5 billion in revenue expected this year, up 150% from 
2003.
Google's hotly anticipated $3.8 billion public offering is just around 
the
corner. These riches are fueling a technological arms race among Yahoo,
Microsoft, Google and others whose software combs the Web constantly, 
indexing
and storing all that you seek and ranking pages on their relevancy.

Search engines can store results in their "cache" for between a month 
and
forever. As archiving improves, it will get harder to clean up what's 
been
revealed. Rarely are leaks intentional: Somebody at work might post a 
file on a
server to download at home, a wrongly configured server might make too 
much of
a hard drive searchable or a Web site's password-protection might be 
flimsy
enough to be accessible to search engines.


Google turned up detailed monthly expenses and employee salaries at the
National Speleological Society's site, caves.org. Says the group's 
president
Scott Fee, "That ain't supposed to be up there."On the site of the Naval
Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. course materials are posted for 
a class
on computer networking, including log-in files that could be of 
interest to the
right hacker. All manner of personal correspondence, including 
transcripts of
intimate instant-messaging exchanges, can be unearthed by search 
engines.
Pamela Dixon, a privacy advocate at the World Privacy Forum, tells of an
elementary school teacher whose contract was not renewed with a Solano 
County,
Calif. school district. This item appears in the minutes of a school 
board
meeting. The announcement still comes up second upon Googling her name. 
Dixon
says this has been devastating to the teacher's job search and that 
attempts to
have the minutes taken down have so far been fruitless.

The 15-person staff at Craig's List, the popular community message 
board, acts
as a rapid response team to keep people from harassing each other by 
name
before one of the 150 search engines that index the site grabs the 
offending
page. "Google, because of the way it stores things, can perpetuate a 
problem,"
says founder Craig Newmark, who recently spent an afternoon chasing a 
user who
wrote six nasty messages about a neighbor.

Search programs will be casting a wider net. Microsoft is tinkering 
with a
technology called Stuff I've Seen that will pull results from the Web 
along
with one's own computer and its network. (Microsoft claims this won't 
make
personal files viewable by the public.) Google's Internet Explorer 
toolbar
tracks the sites users surf and relays the addresses back to 
headquarters. That
may be how Google results can turn up Web pages people naively consider
private, since they're not linked to or from anywhere. Google lets users
disable the feature:Just turn off the PageRank feature in the Options 
menu.

Google recognizes the Web's power to publicize and offers Web masters a 
simple
interface to remove their own pages from its index. (Type "remove" into 
Google
to get started.) Other preventive measures include putting sensitive 
info
behind password-protected walls and attaching so-called robot files to 
Web
sites that tell search engines not to index a particular page or site. 
All the
search engines follow these robot directives, which, while not a perfect
security solution, limit the entry points used by the bots and spiders 
that
index the Web.

Foundstone, an Internet security company in Mission Viejo, Calif., has
developed a tool called SiteDigger that piggybacks on Google to point up
information leaks. Point it at a site or an entire domain, such as 
.edu, and it
generates a list of e-mails, log-in screens, database errors and source 
code,
all of which are classic ways to gain entry onto a server. The free 
tool is a
nice way to attract business for Foundstone, and also a scary reminder 
of how
much information is out there, says SiteDigger designer Mark Curphey. 
Combing
through sites ending in .mil, the domain for the armed forces, a recent
Googling uncovered 17,300 Excel spreadsheets, 56,000 PowerPoint 
presentations,
258,000 Word files and 681,000 Acrobat Reader files.

Search results can be rigged to gain a higher position; pranksters can
manipulate your page so that it shows up whenever someone Googles the 
word
"jerk," a practice known as Google bombing. So why not do the opposite 
to play
down bad publicity? Public relations firm Weber Shandwick employs a 
search
expert in Irving, Tex. named Jeffrey Martin, whose specialty is advising
clients on how to bury bad news under rosier search results.

Systems integration company Science Applications International Corp. of 
San
Diego offers a product called Open Source Monitoring that scans the Web,
newsgroups, Listservs and any other public forums for names and 
trademarks.
Companies use it as an early warning system for hackers, stock 
manipulators,
disgruntled employees and bad-mouthers. The program has helped 
companies avoid
violent protests and direct police to ex-employees who make threats or 
try to
leak confidential information, says Timothy Appleby, the project's chief
scientist.

Better archiving technologies are extending the shelf lives of data you 
don't
want people to see. Google and its competitors save copies of Web pages 
in a
database that makes the pages accessible even when links to the site 
have been
taken down. These cached links are destroyed the next time Google 
re-indexes
the Internet, anywhere from a day to a month. But an online service 
called the
Wayback Machine at archive.org keeps records of old Web sites. You 
never know
what's going to turn up there.

Like libraries, Google and its search rivals do not assume 
responsibility for
the content that they catalog. But with lawsuits filed at the drop of a 
hat,
search services should take note. In June Varian Medical Systems won a 
case
against two former employees who defamed company executives online, 
winning
$775,000 in damages in what's become a landmark Internet speech case. A 
judge
ruled last year in New Hampshire that Docusearch, a purveyor of personal
information, could be sued for the death of a stalking victim whose 
murderer
used its services. (The case was settled before trial.)

Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy famously said, "You already 
have zero
privacy. Get over it." That's not quite true. You can fight back, up to 
a
point.

--- David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: bill keeshen <keeshen () gmail com>
> Date: September 24, 2004 4:45:31 PM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Google Me Not
> Reply-To: bill keeshen <keeshen () gmail com>
>
> Google Me Not
>
>
> Keeping confidential company data, or last weekend's cocktail party
> photos, away from search engines has become a growth business.
> Type the right words into Google and up comes a trove of files
> documenting an acrimonious divorce between two business executives in
> San Diego. Support payments are calculated based on a $450,000 income.
> The husband accuses the wife of being a "shop-a-holic." He lists all
> her possessions, including furs worth $15,000. He's eager to finalize
> the divorce, because, as he writes, he was to marry again in June. All
> this is personal, private information, no longer even up on the
> original Web site, yet stored by Google for everyone to see, including
> friends, family and business associates who enter in the divorced
> couple's names. When reached by phone, the husband says he is "stunned
> and shocked" that FORBES is interested in the matter at all.
>
> ....
>
> Like libraries, Google and its search rivals do not assume
> responsibility for the content that they catalog. But with lawsuits
> filed at the drop of a hat, search services should take note. In June
> Varian Medical Systems won a case against two former employees who
> defamed company executives online, winning $775,000 in damages in
> what's become a landmark Internet speech case. A judge ruled last year
> in New Hampshire that Docusearch, a purveyor of personal information,
> could be sued for the death of a stalking victim whose murderer used
> its services. (The case was settled before trial.)
>
> Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy famously said, "You already
> have zero privacy. Get over it." That's not quite true. You can fight
> back, up to a point.
>
>
>
>
> http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Forbes/2004/08/16/517843
>
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