Web based applications use on Science Friday
by
Charlie Bess
NPR has a radio show called Science Friday that is part of Talk of the Nation. They break up the hour long program into a set of podcasts. One segment from last week covered Web based applications. I thought they only lightly touched on the security issues of using these services. It may be fine for personal usage, but I know of few organizations that will let their proprietary information be stored on-line in locations that another organization controls with little if any real restrictions on how that organization will use/mine the information.
There were a few calls from the audience about this issue, but it just was not addressed. This is an issue that needs to be thought through. My kids were a bit shocked when I told them that all their SMS messages were probably stored somewhere. Of course, I was concerned that they were concerned! Imagine how companies feel about this same issue for their documents.
For example: Google’s privacy policy around Google Docs states:
“Google's servers automatically record certain information about your use of Google Docs. Similar to other web services, Google records information such as account activity (e.g., storage usage, number of log-ins, actions taken), data displayed or clicked on (e.g., UI elements, links), and other log information (e.g., browser type, IP address, date and time of access, cookie ID, referrer URL).”
It also states that Google adheres to the U.S. Safe Harbor privacy principles, but that’s not quite enough. It seemed a bit unclear if they mine the information stored in Google Docs. All the companies that provide these kinds of services need to be a bit clearer about what they will or will not do with the documents stored in their service.
