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"Going Google" Exposes Students' Email
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.')"
Is that three days after they were notified, or did the affected students keep it quiet for a couple of days for 'research purposes'.
Invaders must die
What the fuck.
This is a really big deal. And if the excuse is that 3 days (admittedly, 2 of them weekend days) turnaround on an absolute security breach is what you get for free, and to expect better you must pay for it, then the proper response is to pay for better and not use this service because it's shit-broken. It is my understanding that Google Apps for Education is not a tiered service -- you're a school, you get it free; there is no paying for better. If there IS paying for better, then we should spread awareness that the free version is bad.
Might I point out that losing privacy on your email and THEN losing access is pretty much the worst possible failure mode? This is an enormous fuck-up. This has nothing to do with Microsoft. Why would you bring up Microsoft? YOU are the one twisting something into what it is not to make some other company look bad. If I were as paranoid as you, I'd suggest that Google or Apple or somesuch was paying you to do this, but in fact, I know that you're capable of being fuckwitted all on your own.
Jesus Christ. Google Apps' security fails utterly, and that's Google kicking Microsoft in the groin to you? Maybe Google can start a puppy-stomping program; I bet that's just like Google ripping Microsoft's arms off.
I'd be a lot more comfortable if Google said "yeah, we fucked up, here's what we're going to do to prevent this from happening again". Instead we get the self-contradictory "it was a small hiccup [...] it's an issue we've taken extremely seriously".
Worse than just a breach of privacy of email, students use their college-provided accounts to communicate with their faculty. If other students are able to see their emails, that constitutes a potential FERPA breach. As a college IT administrator, I would be screaming at Google for not sharing info and reacting immediately. Waiting a day to shut the accounts down temporarily is inexcusable.
we've decided to migrate everything to some giant, well-liked third party with a reputation for excellence,
Does Google actually have a reputation for excellence? Apart from their search engine and maybe Google Maps, is anything they make "excellent"? Does anything excel; is anything groundbreaking and complete in utility and quality? I remember when a lot of their releases stayed in extended-Beta, which is code for "it's free, it's out there so use it at your own peril". I find a lot of their stuff nifty, and I think they head in interesting new directions, but they seem to be always short of excellence. Personally I think that they have gained years worth of kudos - and, by extension, a reputation for excellence - by creating a great search engine (not to mention the big plus of not being Microsoft) and are spending it.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Apart from their search engine and maybe Google Maps, is anything they make "excellent"?
I have to say, I'm really glad to hear someone share this opinion. I've been a long time "fanboy" of Google, seldom questioning any of their choices (while finding all manner of things to be critical of with Microsoft, Apple, and *nix/open-source). On reflexion after reading this, I've come to realize something: Google is what would result from my IQ being doubled and a thousand clones made from me. They find some problem-space, develop something with really cool potential, get bored when it comes to refining the product and making it viable, then find some shiny new problem to work on. It's like they're grad students getting paid by a commercial entity to do research.