In the Web 2.0 age online collaboration tools is the buzzword. Zoho, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Thinkfree and others have become the default office applications suite because of the ease with which users can share information in any given tool. Also information stored within such online suites is accessible from anywhere using just a computer or cell phone with a browser. But are they really safe? The answer is NO.
Most users use these online office suites to share personal and confidential information with colleagues, friends etc. or for their own use. But they could unintentionally leave the documents accessible by anyone on the world wide web by making them public and crawlable by the search engines.
Yoav Ezer has mined 1500 documents with private data residing on public folders of these online office suites to show you how vulnerable your data can be on third-party servers.
Corporates who are still interested in online office suites for the ease of sharing and collaboration can deploy ThinkFree Office which can run within the company firewall on the company server.
Most users use these online office suites to share personal and confidential information with colleagues, friends etc. or for their own use. But they could unintentionally leave the documents accessible by anyone on the world wide web by making them public and crawlable by the search engines.
Yoav Ezer has mined 1500 documents with private data residing on public folders of these online office suites to show you how vulnerable your data can be on third-party servers.
Corporates who are still interested in online office suites for the ease of sharing and collaboration can deploy ThinkFree Office which can run within the company firewall on the company server.
Share this page
Email this page
Back to Top
Home
Edit Post
2 comments:
Anonymous
December 14, 2006 11:08 AM
The sites themselves haven't been compromised. The users are using it badly, and publishing things they shouldn't be and the users are unsafe. Saying the sites are unsafe because of bad user behavior is unfair to the sites.
Yes. It is possible for a user to publish information they shouldn't. But that's user error. I have seen no proof yet of a site error sharing data and your article says that the sites aren't safe, implying that sites are leaky and they're not. It's the users.
The article you mention makes the same logical leap as you: If a user can make a mistake, then it is the site's fault. That's disingenuous at best, willfully, sensationally, dishonest at worst.
Chief Editor
December 14, 2006 9:29 PM
Thats exactly what i meant to say! Users might unknowingly publish their documents instead of sharing them with specific contacts. It could bring great losses for corporates whose confidential information could be leaked by careless employees.