[Infowarrior] - Google bug shared private online documents

[Richard Forno]

Google software bug shared private online documents  	
Mar 10 07:39 AM US/Eastern

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.54c3200989573ae4c9282658f91276df.481&show_article=1

Google has confirmed that a software bug exposed documents thought to  
be privately stored in the Internet giant's online Docs application  
service.

The problem was fixed by the weekend and is believed to have affected  
only .05 percent of the digital documents at a Google Docs service  
that provides text-handling programs as services on the Internet.

"We've identified and fixed a bug where a very small percentage of  
users shared some of their documents inadvertently," Google Docs  
Product Manager Jennifer Mazzon wrote in a message at the firm's  
website on Saturday.

"We're sorry for the trouble this has caused. We understand our users'  
concerns (in fact, we were affected by this bug ourselves) and we're  
treating this very seriously."

The problem occurred in cases where people had chosen to collaborate  
on multiple documents and adjusted settings to allow access to others,  
according to Google.

Collaborators were unintentionally given permission to access  
documents aside from the ones intended.

"As part of the fix, we used an automated process to remove  
collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as  
having been affected," Mazzon said.

"We then emailed the document owners to point them to their affected  
documents in case they need to re-share them."

The slip comes as Google and other Internet firms entice people to  
rely on applications offered online as services "in the cloud" instead  
of buying software then installing and maintaining it on their own  
machines.

While the trend toward cloud services is growing, some still worry  
about the privacy of data kept online and whether it is shrewd to rely  
on the Internet for access to information and applications.


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