SEL: Google Web Accelerator a Privacy Concern?

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May 06, 2005

Google Web Accelerator a Privacy Concern?

Nathan Weinberg has posted a review of the new Google Web Accelerator and he thinks he has uncovered some disturbing bugs.

...Google isn't serving web pages faster, its serving other people's versions of the web page faster. What does that mean? Try using Web Accelerator on a forum site, one with lots of geeks who love Google and probably already have Web Accelerator installed. Why, if you're lucky, you'll be logged in as someone else, as the folks at SomethingAwful.com discovered. The posters in that forum discovered that most of the times they refreshed the page, they were logged in as a different person, seeing their friend's control panel for the forums.

I've not been able to re-create the problem and I am sceptical that it even exists. Google has been caching the web for years, I find it highly unlikely that they would release a tool that would let you see the cache of another user. If in fact, the bug does exist, it doesn't bode well for Google. They're barely getting over the uproar, from privacy advocates, about security issues with Gmail and Desktop search. If they continue releasing products that have security issues, they'll quickly get a reputation that they don't want.

Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |

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