Alexa's Blog

I just notice on eWeek website an interesting review of the Worst Data Breach in the past years.If you are a programmer, a CEO, Network Administrator or anything else related to user data storage and management have a look.We all have something to learn and keep in our minds about that.

Happy reading and let´s hope that we are safe

See them all here: Worst Data Breaches Ever

Well, I think is pretty safe to say: They don´t control it yet. However they have a lot of  information about many of us and many voices are rising about privacy issues.

As many of us know Google is gathering data from us with any tools they put on the table for our benefit and of course for free. They store anything we search for, all of our emails and anything we do in generally with all their tools.

Let´s make a short review:

For general users,

• Google Search - search engine.They store anything we search
• Google Talk - Anything we talk.As far as I know there is no support for encryption here too.
• Google Mail (Gmail) - Any communication via their email system.Unlimited space, more emails stored, better for them.
• Google Desktop - Index EVERYTHING on your computer.Files, music, photos, chat logs, browsing history and god knows what else.
• Google Calendar - Your planning and events that takes part of your daily life.
• Google Docs - Whatever you put there.Personal things, project stories, etc…
• Google Orkut - Personal information about you and your friends
• Google Reader - Anything you read via their Rss/Atom feeds service
• Google Checkout - Anything you buy and from where
• Google Maps - Anything you search and request there.Driving direction to a given address and why not to your own home…
• Google Video - Anything you watch.

If I forgot something let ´me know.Just imagine what big amount of data they collect for any about us.If a user use all of their services they just know… everything about him.What they do with all that information ? Personally I think that everything is resuming to Marketing and Control. How do they know what are the best deals and market trends ? How they decide what to buy and what not ? You guess. Analyze of this data can reveal a lot of things about almost anything.

I must admit that Google owns people which use all of those services or at least a big part of them.I know persons who drive their business using Google Docs to share documents and discussions with their teams. Then they get surprised when they found that Google has just coming on the market with a similar tool or service.

On the other hand, I think that there is no privacy issue here.People grant them the right to collect all this data in exchange for those services.As a result what they do with this data is up to them, but keep in mind that all of their power come from us, the daily users of their tools.I don´t think that making all data collected anonymous after 24 months will solve any privacy issues either.They can use that data before and after very well for the same purposes.The big problem here is about collecting and the fact that users are agree with that without any concerns.

Just imagine what can happen if one of their employers steal and sell the most searched product.Or the top 10 of the best sold products.

If we put together all those tools with the ones they give to Webmasters and the new Google Gears which is for developers the set for driving the world in the near future is almost complete. I am sure that everything will get completed soon with the only thing they don´t have yet (or at least we don´t know about) and that is political power.

We are the ones that we push them high and we are the ones that help them make their dream to happen.
Don´t forget:

“Who will control the information will control the world.”

Google is just one step away from that and their actual leaders will not live forever.What will happen after that? Who make some predictions ?

And to see that I am not alone thinking like this, here are some links to related articles. Enjoy and get scary at the same time…

Is It OK that Google Owns Us?

Is Google Evil ?

Google Evil ?

Google - Don’t Be Evil

As stated by Ryan Singel on his post on Wired Blogs, the Firefox extensions provided by those companies (and probable others too) have a serious flaw in the update routines.

When starting the browser, those extensions check for new version on the provider servers.The point is that the check should be done over a Secure Connection Layer (SSL) which encrypt all the data sent over the network and stop any sniffer to catch the request.

Those extensions made the check using a standard unencrypted connection, which allow a possible attacker to intercept the request and send back a malicious update, which once installed in your browser can monitor and steal any information you enter into your browser.This include any url you type and any value entered by you in the forms of html pages INCLUDING ones opened over an SSL connection.Remember that the encryption is used only in the communication protocol and that happen after you have completed a payment form for example and the browser send the collected data to the server.

Well, this was a matter of time. What upset me most is the fact that almost all the time the bigger treats are coming from big software providers which don´t bother to check the most basics tutorials about how to handle the updates in a secure way.

Millions of users are using those extensions from a very long time and they where exposed all the time to this treat.Worse is that there is the posibility to be already hijacked even if the hole was made public right now.Those are the exploits used by spammers and other bad guys to stole your private data.

Be very careful when choosing your Firefox extensions and look first what other people are saying about them.Having all kind of toolbars and buttons in Firefox might help you for your daily tasks, but can be a serious problem when you do private tasks or working with very sensitive data.

If you need more, read the Ryan´s story on Wired Blogs.

Take Care and Watch Yourself!