Monday, February 13, 2006

Google Desktop 3 Privacy Concerns

Following up from the last post about the new Google Desktop 3 beta, there have been many privacy concerns voiced on the Google desktop group and around the web about its new Search across computers feature. How it works is that data from your computer is sent to Google's servers, so that when working a different computer with Google Desktop installed you can access the index of your first computer.

According to Google, it's all encrypted and locked down, but people seem to be worried that the US government will try and access it. I use Google Desktop, but I don't use this feature, partly because I don't have another computer with Google Desktop installed on it and even though I do (fairly) trust Google, I wouldn't want all my documents traversing the internet. And living in the UK, I don't think the US government has an immediate right to access my data either.

BTW, this is my first post as a guest of this blog while Huw is away, so if you're interested give my blog a look (it focuses more on what I'm developing and doing and thinking rather than the latest tech news, however). So despite the fact that this is credited as by Huw, it's actually by me, Peter. Hi everyone.

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