All Your Data Is Belong To Us
I've installed Google Desktop. I read all the hoopla about 'security concerns' and I installed it anyway.
I love it.
I am the only authorized user of my laptop, so the multiple user, single logon 'flaw' of GD is of no concern to me. If someone is ever in a position to use GD against me like that, I have bigger issues.
So I installed it, let it index, and I've slowly begun to use it. It rocks. By far, the biggest benefit for me is the lightning quick searches of my Outlook folders. The built in search in Outlook is anemic, and this is a huge improvement. The integration with Google.com searches is interesting to me as well. If you go to Google and search for 'paintball' for example, at the top of the search results page is a short summary of related files on my local machine. That's pretty cool. Google says it performs this function without sending any data to Google, using what is probably a type of web service. They also state that the index information cannot be accessed remotely - and that's been tested by third parties.
The only remaining concern would be spyware or a virus written to exploit GD once it infects a computer with GD installed. That could be interesting. GD allows access from the local machine over HTTP, so theoretically, malicious software could access that data via that vector. Of course, the spyware/virus has to get installed first. This is difficult against a savvy user running updated anti-virus software (as I do).
Overall, if you are the only user of your machine, I recommend giving this a try. It's fast, effective, and free - what more do you want?
I love it.
I am the only authorized user of my laptop, so the multiple user, single logon 'flaw' of GD is of no concern to me. If someone is ever in a position to use GD against me like that, I have bigger issues.
So I installed it, let it index, and I've slowly begun to use it. It rocks. By far, the biggest benefit for me is the lightning quick searches of my Outlook folders. The built in search in Outlook is anemic, and this is a huge improvement. The integration with Google.com searches is interesting to me as well. If you go to Google and search for 'paintball' for example, at the top of the search results page is a short summary of related files on my local machine. That's pretty cool. Google says it performs this function without sending any data to Google, using what is probably a type of web service. They also state that the index information cannot be accessed remotely - and that's been tested by third parties.
The only remaining concern would be spyware or a virus written to exploit GD once it infects a computer with GD installed. That could be interesting. GD allows access from the local machine over HTTP, so theoretically, malicious software could access that data via that vector. Of course, the spyware/virus has to get installed first. This is difficult against a savvy user running updated anti-virus software (as I do).
Overall, if you are the only user of your machine, I recommend giving this a try. It's fast, effective, and free - what more do you want?
posted by DFMerrick at 09:25
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