Online Search Engines Lift Cover Of Privacy

Rican writes "MSNBC has an interesting article about how 'Googledorks' are using the powerful search engine to do searches across the web for sensitive and/or private information. Some of this information includes 'Medical records, bank account numbers, students' grades, and the docking locations of 804 U.S. Navy ships, submarines and destroyers.'"

Comments

I've heard of "cow orkers"...

[Black Parrot]

...but what the heck are "googled orks"?

Re:I've heard of "cow orkers"...

[Snad]

...but what the heck are "googled orks"?

It's the technical term for searching the web for the name of an extra in the big fight scenes in The Lord of the Rings movies.

This is a very popular pass time in New Zealand, where 95% of the country's population was used in the Minas Tirith scene.

Re:I've heard of "cow orkers"...

[ross.w]

Searchable goblins perhaps?

SS Minnow

[flewp]

But can they find the last port location of the SS Minnow?!

Cue Dr. Evil

[Clinoti]

The most basic way to keep Google from reaching information in a "Web server", security experts said, is to set up a "digital gatekeeper in the form of an instruction sheet for the search-engine's crawler. That file, which is called "fembots.txt"

Homework answers

[form3hide]

Lets pretend I'm taking a computer science course.

Lets pretend each week I have a program to code.

You see if you pretend, of course, I put the filename into google, and clicked search. In pretend, you know what came up?

The source code to the program I had to write for my university.

But remember, this is in pretend land.

Re:Homework answers

[DiveX]

Great. Now I have to shift through about one million pages with the term 'Hello World" in order to find the one I need. It is going to take me like 5 hours to find this when I could write it in a span of 3 minutes. There goes my afternoon.

Re:Google threatens privacy and national security

[Neppy]

How can we not hold Mapblast (how's that name for irony!) partially responsible for the Two Towers tragedy when several aerial photographs from the site were found in Atta's car?
Shouldn't we also hold the gas companies responsible? I bet they found gasoline in his car too.

nothing new

[martin-boundary]

People have been doing searches for private, sensitive, pr0n logins and passwords for years...

Err, not me of course ;-)

Re:Nothing new

[Beatbyte]

you mean 539-60-5125?

/. google!

[potpie]

now's our chance! I think we can slashdot Google!

Re:Names..

[MikeXpop]

Manly man, aren't you?

Re:Could happen to you

[bobthemuse]

A while back I Googled my credit card number for a laugh.

I wonder if google has a feature where I can view recent search terms...? You had a laugh, I get a giggle, we're all having fun!

Re:Why Google?

[Deraj DeZine]

1. Take an out-of-context and incorrect generalization
2. Post it as concisely as possible
3. ??? (Something involving moronic moderators
4. KARMA!!!

Tin Foil people, please observe

[Shimmer]

This article is from the Washington Post, not from Microsoft. Please adjust your conspiracy theories accordingly.

Get a new one...

[NotQuiteReal]

ssa - this is for victims of spousal abuse, but it's best I could do in 30 seconds.

I am sure there are other reasons you could get your SSN changed, like "I'm Bill Gates, and every jokester in the world has my SSN..."

Re:Could happen to you

[Mighty Eris]

Just hang out in their corporate headquarters and watch the tickertape. I'm sure you'll find something interesting...

Re:Kazaa and Gnutella are cooler

[cpex]

Go into kazaa and gnutella and search for any .doc files. Or some likely sounding names like "resume" or "job application"

I dont know about you but the more people that see my resume the better.

JV

WMDs

[EduardoFonseca]

Damn! I tried to search for the WMDs on Google...Not even Google could find them! hehehe...

We MUST shut down google NOW!

[Tyir]

Google and Janet Jackson's right boob are CLEARLY the causes of the deterioration of our society!!!!!!!!!

search engines, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like these "search engines" are nothing more than tools used by those "internet hackers" for their evil deeds. Lets all write letters to our congressmen; these criminals can be tolerated no longer!

Re:Fuck that shit

[micromoog]

More specifically, it says "Please do not enter my house and steal my jewelery and banknotes which are in the safe in the bottom-right of the bedroom closet."

The safe, however, should be locked.

Re:Google threatens privacy and national security

[jasonditz]

How can we not hold Mapblast (how's that name for irony!) partially responsible for the Two Towers tragedy

I'd pin most of it on Saruman.

Good Circle of Reasoning.

[twitter]

f Bill Gates is using the same SS # that was leaked in 1995, then he is a total moron. He is not a moron. Therefore he is not using the same SS # that was leaked in 1995. QED

f Bill Gates is using the same broswer that he pushed in 1995, then he is a total moron. He is not a moron. Therefore he is not using the same browser that he pushed in 1995,IE, QED

dumb, de-dumb, dumb.

Nice of MSNBC to malign the thing M$ can neither match nor buy.

Re:Um.

[shaka]

If it's sensitive, it shouldn't be world readable. Ever. It shouldn't matter if you know that htttp://www.CIA.gov/secret/topsecret/locationsOfAl lAgentsInTheWorld.xls is where the file is; the server shouldn't let anyone load it.

Dude, if you think writing "htttp" with three t:s and put a space in the URL is gonna stop people from finding that document, you're pretty behind to tell you the truth.

I do wonder, however, how YOU knew the location of locationsOfAllAgentsInTheWorld.xls? That's supposed to be a secret!