Google Desktop - how did it index my Yahoo email?

[KyDave]

Just installed Google Desktop and was a bit surprised that it had indexed all of my Yahoo emails. When I set it up, it never prompted me for my Yahoo account and/or password.

Does anyone know how it did this? Perhaps stored passwords in Firefox?

 

[rockymtnhigh]

That is a good question. No reference to the capability on the Google Desktop website...

your hunch might be correct, but I am a bit surprised.

 

[KyDave]

Yea, I have to admit it was kind of creepy. I have unchecked the 'email' portion of the index and re-indexed. The Yahoo email search (the only email I use for the most part) works pretty well already.

I do love the speed for local searches, however. Amazing.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Oh yeah, Google desktop has saved my butt many times, trying to find stuff. It can also be setup to search across your computers; although I have never set that up.

 

[primestar31]

Just installed Google Desktop and was a bit surprised that it had indexed all of my Yahoo emails. When I set it up, it never prompted me for my Yahoo account and/or password.

Does anyone know how it did this? Perhaps stored passwords in Firefox?

Google Desktop is basically nothing more than a kind of spyware program. It'll index ALL your personal info, and place that search info where you don't want it! The company I work for proved this was happening, and removed it from consideration as a useful program. It even was placing proprietary business info from us on their servers. I would suggest you remove it as soon as you can.

The Dangers of Desktop Search- Google Tool as Spyware

Google Spyware? Bad Guys & Spies Using Google Desktop Search | WebProNews

 

[Van]

Yahoo email services intercepted this transmission.

"We are the Google, resistance is futile, prepare to be assimilated

Contact with Yahoo email services has been lost.

 

[KyDave]

Come to think of it, it may have only indexed some recently accessed Yahoo mail messages. That make more sense. Still don't like it, but it makes sense. I unchecked the email and web history options under preferences.

Primestar - thanks for the articles. Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say "It even was placing proprietary business info from us on their servers." Nothing I have read including the two articles above mention that.

 

[primestar31]

Come to think of it, it may have only indexed some recently accessed Yahoo mail messages. That make more sense. Still don't like it, but it makes sense. I unchecked the email and web history options under preferences.

Primestar - thanks for the articles. Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say "It even was placing proprietary business info from us on their servers." Nothing I have read including the two articles above mention that.

I can't mention on the boards what company I work for, But it's one of the Fortune 500's. We were beta testing it a couple years ago. On the company pc's it was placed on, it was indexing all the info on the harddrive, and it then uploads that search info to a Google server. That's how it works. It gathers and gives enough info, that if another company had access to those servers, they could easily piece together enough information for some real industrial espionage "the easy way". I don't care what Google says about it, I've been in I.T., and worked with some of our network engineers for almost 20 years, and I'll believe them, as I saw it myself. I can't recommend this program to anybody, and If I had it on my pc, I'd wipe and reload.