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Security Fears Over Google Accelerator

Posted by Zonk on from the road-to-hell-is-paved-with-web-caching dept.

Espectr0 writes "A software tool launched by Google on Wednesday that speeds up the process of downloading Web sites (covered recently on Slashdot) has caused some users to worry about their privacy. A ZDNet article discusses problems that users have been experiencing with the information that is cached by the software. On a Google Labs discussion group, one user said that 'I went to the Futuremark forums and noticed that I'm logged in as someone I don't know...'" Commentary also available on Signal vs. Noise and BlogNewsChannel.

3 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. All Together Now... by Future+Linux-Guru · · Score: 5, Insightful

    B
    E
    T
    A

    You'll get better results filing a report with Google as opposed to complaining on /.

    As for me, I used the 3.7 minutes I've saved so far to spend some quality time with my friends.

    1. Re:All Together Now... by arkanes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think a more obvious answer here is that GWA is exposing web security bugs on a wide variety of applications. It's worth noting that if GWA can compromise your security, then it can be done intentionally as well. Which is not to say that caching issues should be ignored, or that there may not be a real problem with users getting some other users cookies. But if GWA can seriously affect your website, then instead of bitching that GWA is breaking your website like SomethingAwful did, you need to realize that your security was already flawed and you need to fix it.

  2. Re:You say that, but... by nmk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think he's probably proposing that they should stop acting like pussies and start taking some responsibility for their software. Like he said Google has turned the very concept of the Beta into a joke. If MS was to keep a major piece of software in Beta for three or four years (as does Google), they would be accused of incompetence. I think the same should apply to Google.