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General discussion

Online Search Engines Help Lift Cover of Privacy

Feb 10, 2004 10:15AM PST

owerful search engines such as Google can be used to find private or secret documents on the Internet. Known as "Google hacking," many users are fine-tuning their search requests to uncover sensitive information, such as military documents on suspected al Qaeda operatives, with names and identification numbers, medical records, and credit card numbers. Such searches do not require an illegal trespass of a computer, but use Google to find material kept with little or no security in obscure but open parts of the Internet. Google's computers crawl webpages cataloging the data they find, and then provide users with powerful tools for searching that data. Searches including the terms "xls," "cc," and "ssn," can find Excel spreadsheets with customer credit card or Social Security data. In one instance, security consultant Edward Skoudis was able to find a bank's spreadsheet with the names, credit card numbers, and Social Security numbers of over 10,000 of its customers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24053-2004Feb8.html

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