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Google Voice voicemails appearing in public search results | |
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| Time: 09:46 EST/14:46 GMT | News Source: Engadget | Posted By: Robert Stein | ||
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We're not exactly sure what's going on here, but it certainly seems like at least some Google Voice voicemails are being indexed and made publicly available somehow -- if you use "site:https://www.google.com/voice/fm/*" as a search string you get a few pages of what appear to be test messages, but there are a couple eye-opening obvious non-tests scattered in there as well. Dates on these messages range from a couple months ago all the way until yesterday, so this is clearly an ongoing issue -- hopefully Google patches this up awful fast. | ||
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| #1 By 23443 (169.200.80.16) at 10/19/2009 11:39:35 AM |
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Must be fixed:
Your search - "site:https://www.google.com/voice/fm/*" - did not match any documents. TD |
| #2 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 10/19/2009 11:50:53 AM |
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Try entering site:https://www.google.com/voice/fm/* into www.google.com
skeery stuff! |
| #3 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 10/19/2009 11:52:29 AM |
| Latch? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site:https://www.google.com/voice/fm/*&start=0&sa=N Thoughts on this? |
| #4 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 10/19/2009 1:51:30 PM |
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#4: It's definitely a boneheaded error. I very much doubt Google meant for their voicemail service to be indexed. When you read some of them, it looks like these were test messages or gags or something. Seriously, what does "hello this is lauren calling from the visit tom molly the left trying to reach today we made it safely after i don't know over road over going can eric call" mean??
I would never think of using such a service. Even corporations that have stringent privacy policies and government regulation that would kill them with fines in the case of a data breach still have data breaches. |
| #5 By 37 (192.251.125.85) at 10/19/2009 1:57:39 PM |
| Latch, that quote you have is one of the "translations" from voice to text from Google. I have had numerous translations come out like that. They need to work on it. |
| #6 By 9589 (71.54.56.105) at 10/19/2009 2:38:55 PM |
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Well, that does it for me!
I am moving all my data and that of my company's onto the net where it will be safe and secure and a fortress built around it to protect it. And, Google, of course, will be my first choice! lol |
| #7 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 10/19/2009 4:05:02 PM |
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Though these were GVM's that people did wish to share with others, they did not intend for them to be shared with the general public. They were included in the public indexes and began to show up for all to see - that was the issue.
The problem is potentially greater and that has more to do with Google and how they either use information about people, or how they are able to safeguard and isolate information people do not want made public. This example touches on a bit of both. |
| #8 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at 10/19/2009 5:07:22 PM |
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Ketch,
A philosophical question. Is any data, and I use that term in its broadest sense, secure? It is my understanding for instance that the analog satellite communication system like the one in my 5 year old Benz was killed off because analog data is difficult for the "authorities" to monitor. My feeling is that just because personal information is not indexed on Google doesn't means that it is private. |
| #9 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 10/19/2009 5:38:12 PM |
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#8, Yes, data can be made to be secure and mostly importantly secured, from monitoring.
It isn't especially hard to do and I reason it is especially important to do. Analog signals are no more difficult to collect and process that digital signals - they are however more costly to collect, process and disseminate reporting product from. Take SMS for example - the carriers' dirtiest little secret. Such messages are encoded in a tiny portion of a servicing channel that is there no matter what a subsciber is doing - it costs the carriers exactly zero to carry this traffic, yet they charge for it and can easily filter and collect against it. Now back to securing data. Let's just deal with the important types. First internal company email. USE Exchange and have a company that knows what they are doing set it up to use NTLM/WIN forms of authentication, vice the default basic when running RPC over HTTPS Outlook Anywhere clients. Do use that connection method by the way - traffic will be encrypted twice and credentials will encrypted yet again (one time tokens). Same drill with collaboration - run this on your own hosts, or with a small trusted partner and make sure idle state data/databases are encrypted. Again, allow SSL only traffic - blocking any access to port 80 (HTTP). Face unique document libraries to customers that are also encrypted - email links all you want, but ensure all else is encrypted. We baked secure documents management into our Sovereign Enterprise software for exactly this reason - to keep private information private. All idle state data should be encrypted and applications should make use of triple DES in order to super-encrypt key data fields - like profile data for customers. Apps Server firewalls should also be used to ensure that each thread is secured and member servers are who they say they are - machine certs are not enough and guys trained as I have been can get around them. Retire and archive data that is not needed to support your work and consider strict email retention policies. Having a retention policy can save you a ton of headaches in a number of cases. Do consider using something like CryptoCloud for all online interactions. There is no sense in handing anyone any level of access to what you are interested in - no matter how boring your activity may be (mine surely is, but it is mine and it matters to me). More than anything... we have to get away from the idea that just because there is a public Internet, that others have free access to anything they wish. This is really dangerous and people are being conditioned to think it is ok. It is not ok and companies and governments do take advantage of this. Value your privacy and in a natural way, communicate that privacy is important to you. I've spent two lifetimes (the number of years adds up that way) on both sides of this issue - ripping holes in bad guys and keeping the good guys' information safe and it really matters a great deal. I've literally seen governments change hands because of it and all of us need to value our privacy. Our government no longer does and that much more than crazy spending scares the doo doo out of me. |
| #10 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 10/19/2009 5:48:12 PM |
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#8, couple more things...
Your DNS - not local forward, but the public DNS host named servers you use - if you do not operate your own authoritative delegates (for assigned address spaces) use someone who does and one that purges them with great regularity and has a proven record of keeping them secured. This is more important than most people realize. Do use Bitlocker and do independently encrypt all sensitive documents using EFS. Do use different passwords for all public sites you visit. Use the credential manager in Windows to support this. If one is compromised you won't lose them all. For US citizens, do request a FOIA form and obtain a copy of all records the government maintains on you. It will stun you to understand what they have on file. Demand they destroy any record you disagree with. |
| #11 By 15406 (99.240.77.173) at 10/19/2009 7:07:39 PM |
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It turns out that it wasn't quite what it seemed:
UPDATE: It seems as if these voicemails have been publicly posted/shared online and Google indexes them. Here’s official word: “Since the initial idea behind posting a voicemail, was precisely to share it with others, we did not restrict crawling of those messages that users post on the web, but we can certainly understand that users would want to make them public on their sites but not necessarily searchable directly outside of their own website. We made a change to prevent those to be crawled so only the site owner can decide to index them.” If you post your public voice mail page on another site, Google will index it. That would explain why there were so few articles in total. |
| #12 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 10/19/2009 9:00:39 PM |
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Latch, what part of what I said at #7, above escaped your understanding? Though these were GVM's that people did wish to share with others, they did not intend for them to be shared with the general public.
What you've shared has been understood from the outset. It was still a mistake to have added them to the general public index. |
| #13 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 10/20/2009 7:59:43 AM |
| #12: Don't get saucy with me, Bearnaise! I must have missed your comment. At any rate, if you post stuff on a publicly accessible space, it will get indexed. For all we know, Bing, Ask and all the rest have indexed it also. |
| #14 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 10/20/2009 10:42:26 AM |
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#13 so you're not interested in different points of view and at least interested in learning about a different perspective, and perhaps something new... and simply post reflexively in favor of your own agenda? I mean the bold text suggests conviction.
I've maintained that my use of Microsoft software and support for communities like this is based more on practical considerations attending many aspects inherent to our use of information technology, over any personal preference, or advocacy for a company that I often compete with. You've as often questioned the sincerity of that position. It's unfortunate that you seem to give a pass to any company that competes with Microsoft - and ironic that you do not extend that support to companies like my own. It's even more unfortunate that you can't see that competitors can compete to the mutual benefit of both and the customers served by all. It's like the oath that philosophers take when they receive their PhD’s ignoring their sworn commitment to not practice their professions as ideologues. The scary part for me is that this kind of thinking is what provides Google and others the license they need to abuse not just competitors and markets, but individual people and however bad Microsoft’s behavior may have been in the past, it did not set its sights specifically on ordinary people. |
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