Google Desktop Search security

Nothing is more important to us than the security of the products we offer to our users. So we'd like to thank Professor Dan Wallach and his Rice University students, Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson, for discovering and reporting a small flaw that existed in Google Desktop Search. When Desktop Search showed personal computer search results as part of users' overall web search results, there was a security hole that conceivably could have allowed a malicious site to access small portions of that information. To our knowledge, nobody was actually affected by this problem, and if you're currently using Desktop Search, your machine has been automatically updated with a software fix that ensures the security of your personal information. You can confirm this by going to the Desktop Search home page and clicking the "About" link. On the About Desktop Search page, you'll see that you're now using Beta 121004, which contains the security update. Finally, you can keep track of all the Google Desktop Search releases here.

Nikhil Bhatla
Product manager, Google Desktop Search