Stolen data live on in Google searches:
(07-06) 17:35 PDT -- A Colorado woman logged on to her computer in April, voted on a CNN poll, shopped for airline tickets and calculated payments for a $25,000 car loan from Wells Fargo.She didn't suspect that a malicious software program was recording every keystroke - frequent-flier numbers and passwords, her home address and phone number, an online conversation she was having with some friends.
But it was, and months after authorities were alerted to the breach and disabled the server in Malaysia where her data were being stored, the information was still available online - in a Google search.
The woman, who asked not to be named, was shocked to receive a call from a Chronicle reporter asking if she recognized the personal information, which had been crawled and stored by Google as Google caches all unprotected data it finds on the Web.
"Google seems so friendly," she said. "I don't understand why they don't do a better job protecting our data."
Google spokesman Michael Kirkland said that in general, the search engine doesn't remove cached data, which disappears automatically at some point after its source is taken down. Google expects Webmasters to remove problem content themselves and provides tools to help them do it. ...
RSS Feed