Google might be a Big Brother

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,65397,00.html

Google Might Be a Big Brother

Wired News Report Page 1 of 1
09:30 AM Oct. 19, 2004 PT

People who use public or workplace computers for e-mail, instant messaging and web searching have a new privacy risk to worry about: Google's free tool that indexes a PC's contents for quickly locating data.

If the new Google (GOOG) tool is installed on computers at libraries and internet cafes, users could unwittingly allow people who follow them on the PCs, for example, to see sensitive information in e-mails they've exchanged. That could mean revealed passwords, exposed conversations with doctors or viewed web pages detailing online purchases.

Google Desktop Search, publicly released in a beta test phase for computers running the latest Windows operating systems, automatically records e-mail you read through Outlook, Outlook Express or the Internet Explorer browser. It also saves copies of web pages you view through IE and chat conversations using America Online instant-messaging software. And it finds Word, Excel and PowerPoint files stored on the computer.