Sunday, March 6, 2005

Google hacking

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for finding this. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's article 'Good guys' show just how easy it is... does exactly what the title says. And it is scary to think how some careless people who happen to be in possession of some of your personal information could do this to you. From the article:

It turns out that the powerful search engine, in the hands of a knowledgeable cybertrekker, can ferret out all kinds of sensitive information never meant to be made public. All it takes are sophisticated search terms. The terms go beyond specifying key words to include file types. The right terms can even find information deleted from corporate or government Web sites but temporarily cached in Google's massive warehouse of data.

Kirk Bailey, the city of Seattle's chief information-security officer, calls his Agora compatriots "the primary defenders of the virtual world in the Northwest." Before launching eight teams of hackers from companies such as Intel Corp. and computer-security consultants IOActive, Bailey declared that "our mission is to find answers on how to fix these problems."

This sends chills down my spine...because I use Google everyday in my work, using just such "sophisticated" search terms, and I know darned well how powerful it is. After reading this, I immediately set out to look for any personal information on myself...and found some! Yikes! I fired off three emails to try to get that taken care of...

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