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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.')"

4 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Breach of privacy by Yvanhoe · · Score: -1, Troll

    Sue.

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    1. Re:Breach of privacy by agentgonzo · · Score: 0, Troll

      How is that a troll?

      Because it's a one-word answer to an unasked question that parrot's the American Dream (tm): "Get rich without having to do anything".

      I'd be suing if I got that kind of service from an e-mail service provider. They're selling you a service and support. If they don't provide it, you deserve compensation.

      And that's why the American legal system is FUTA. In most sensible countries, you *can* sue them *if* you have experienced a major problem due to their behaviour - eg, if you can show that you have lost money/posessions/safety etc as a direct result of someone else having access to your emails. You can't just go "I feel slightly aggrieved that someone read my email - give me a bajillion dollars!!!!".

  2. i ran out of toilet paper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    i wiped my ass with a koran.

    fuck all muslims. they're fucking pigs. i shit on allah.

  3. This is why the cloud will fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    The "cloud" is some trendy IT buzzword now and Google tries to be the frontrunner for it yet cannot keep their services up and secure when it hits the big time.

    Why aren't these universities running their own mail servers? There are plenty of people who are tech savvy to run them and do not give away personal info to Google.