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"Going Google" Exposes Students' Email

Posted by kdawson on from the visibility-in-the-clouds dept.

A ReadWriteWeb piece up on the NY Times site explores the recent glitch during the move of a number of colleges onto Google's email service that allowed a number of students to see each others' inboxes for a period of more than three days. Google would not give exact numbers, but the article concludes that about 10 schools were affected. "While the glitch itself was minor and was fixed in a few days, the real concern — at least at Brown — was with how Google handled the situation. Without communicating to the internal IT department, Google shut down the affected accounts, a decision which led to a heated conversation between school officials and the Google account representative. In the end, only 22 out of the 200 students were affected, but the fix was not put into place until Tuesday. ... The students had access to each other's email accounts for three solid days... before the accounts were suspended by Google. Oddly enough, this situation seems to be acceptable [to Brown's IT manager, who] 'praised Google for its prompt response.' (We don't know about you, but if someone else could read our email for three days, we wouldn't exactly call that 'prompt.')"

7 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Google's version of... by The+Ancients · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...social networking.

    Taking it to a new level, no joining or other conscious actions required to share everything about your life.

    --
    The Mothership
    1. Re:Google's version of... by Arancaytar · · Score: 5, Funny

      "You have sent an email to Emily. 6 people like this. 3 people have left a comment:"

      "Frank has sent/received 26/20 emails to/from your friend Tom, 20/23 with your friend Megan, 15/12 with your friend John. Your social graph proximity is therefore 45.1. Click here to add Frank to your friend list and read his emails."

      People would love it! :P

    2. Re:Google's version of... by sunjae · · Score: 4, Funny

      Haha... So funny. You know what though. You should file a patent on this. At the current rate of people's acceptance of loss of privacy, this might actually come to pass!

  2. I'm feeling lucky by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    So that's the use of that button!

  3. Re:Breach of privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm French

    Just save us the trouble and surrender this argument now.

  4. Re:Breach of privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    It's the American dream.

    Fixed it for ya.

  5. Re:methinks he doth protest too much by Yamata+no+Orochi · · Score: 1, Funny

    Most people don't keep that on their email accounts...

    Most people don't keep that *what* on their email accounts?

    Well, according to the post he was responding to, most people don't keep their gay porn collection on their e-mail account.

    Now don't you feel silly for responding so seriously to that?