

- #GOOGLE SEARCH FOR PC DESKTOPS INSTALL#
- #GOOGLE SEARCH FOR PC DESKTOPS WINDOWS 10#
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- #GOOGLE SEARCH FOR PC DESKTOPS SOFTWARE#
- #GOOGLE SEARCH FOR PC DESKTOPS PASSWORD#

“Google Desktop Search brings the power of Google to your personal information on your own computer,” Larry Page, the company’s co-founder and president of products, said in a statement.
#GOOGLE SEARCH FOR PC DESKTOPS WINDOWS 10#
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#GOOGLE SEARCH FOR PC DESKTOPS PRO#
#GOOGLE SEARCH FOR PC DESKTOPS SOFTWARE#
They recommend disabling the part of Google Desktop Search that creates copies of secure Web pages and preventing the software from storing the pages of Web-based e-mail accounts you want to keep private. Schneier and others don't recommend installing Google Desktop Search on work or school computers you can't control.

The question is how easy do you want to make it?"ĭunham says that Google Desktop Search represents a "low" but potentially dangerous security threat for companies.īruce Schneier, a security expert with Counterpane Internet Security, says if you use a public computer terminal - with or without Google Desktop Search - you should assume that everything you type can be read. "There are plenty of ways to get at personal information on a PC. He says the Desktop Search tool could give the keys to your PC's front door to the wrong people. "This is another vector for someone to access sensitive data on someone else's machine," Dunham says. The application does pose a security risk at the workplace, says Ken Dunham, a security expert at iDefense. Google Desktop Search could actually be a privacy boon by allowing people to save Web pages and e-mail locally on their PCs instead of relying on third-party Web-based services, Bankston says.
#GOOGLE SEARCH FOR PC DESKTOPS PASSWORD#
"If you lose control of your computer, someone could quickly pry into password protected information," says Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the group.

Privacy experts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation say Google Desktop Search is not a privacy threat, rather a threat to computer security. Google Desktop Search also allows you to view cached versions of Web pages from online banks and brokerages. Cached versions of sent and received e-mail from services like Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL can easily be viewed. The query results can't be accessed directly, but Google Desktop Search creates and stores its own cached versions of search results on your PC. In informal tests, Google Desktop Search was able to bypass user names and passwords that secure Web-based e-mail programs and allow users to view personal messages sent and received using the Web-based e-mail services of America Online, Microsoft's Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail.īecause of this, Smith and other privacy experts say the beta version of Google Desktop Search presents a security threat for insecure and shared computers running the software in the workplace and in public settings like Internet cafes.īy searching for "compose" and "inbox" using Google Desktop Search, you're able to view Web pages that the application had indexed. She says that Google Desktop Search is not intended to be used on computers that are shared with more than one person.
#GOOGLE SEARCH FOR PC DESKTOPS INSTALL#
That means if a second person logs onto the same computer using a different user profile they cannot access or install Google Desktop Search, says Mayer. The beta version of the program can only be installed by one Windows user profile. This would prevent it from storing copies of the secure pages used by financial sites, or from storing Web pages from a domain such as "," she says. Google Desktop Search can be configured not to index specific domains or secure Web pages, says Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products. Google, however, says the application does not pose security or privacy risks. "Like a gun, it is extremely useful and potentially very dangerous." "This is basically a spying program," says Richard Smith, an independent privacy and security consultant.
