Desktop Search: A Back Door?
Do you use desktop search tools? There are so many of them out there: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, HotBot, and more. All of them offer you the ability to find that one file you really need on your desktop. But how safe are they?
I recently read an article that depicted an interesting scenario. I can’t speak for the other tools listed above, but according to this article Google’s desktop search tool indexes all the files on your computer even if those files are no longer available. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but read on.
The consultant in this story explained that his client kept usernames and passwords on a USB drive. When the client hooked up their USB drive to the consultant’s laptop, all that information became part of the index for Google’s desktop search tool that was installed on the laptop.
I need to be clear here: the tool didn’t upload anything to Google, it just included it in its list of things to search on the consultant’s laptop. The tool is designed to include anything it sees on the hard drive (and connected to it) as part of its searchable content. So when the USB drive was removed from the laptop, the information still remained there.
That’s something easily overlooked. I never would have considered such an unintentional breach of security.
So, I’m not suggesting you go uninstall your desktop search tools. Just bear in mind the possibilty of including information you didn’t intend to include in such a tool.
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