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Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

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Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#121

Post by [deleted] »

dredmorbius wrote: post #40
slazaro wrote: post #3

The worst thing about things like this happening is the feeling of helplessness when you can't reach anyone in the company or when they just say "it's not a problem".

Or the company shill shows up and burns through four HN accounts trying to spread FUD. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk2 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk3 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk4 (Should I add the 5th link or wait for him to create that ID as well?)

[deleted]

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#122

Post by deveshparekh »

master-ruse-man wrote: post #68
raverbashing wrote: post #66

So the way to solve this is to create a note on my calendar with "Remind to complain about this to vic.gundotra@google.com larry.page@google.com" ?

What about we flood their calendar about this? ;)

Just in case anybody took parent seriously, you shouldn't do this for the same reason you shouldn't flood their email inboxes about this. They will just mark your calendar invitation as spam.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#123

Post by mikeash »

ritikk4 wrote: post #15
nmc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity (and regardless of the meaning of your comment), are you completely unrelated to the author of the comment you are linking to? Except the "3" at the end, their pseudonym is identical to yours. Here on HN people do not like fake accounts.

It's mine, I just signed up to join the discussion, but evidently new users get rate-limited to only a few comments, so I've incremented the username by 1 to indicate it's still me.

And this is exactly the sort of stupid, antisocial behavior that leads this site to rely so heavily on hellbanning, terrible though it is.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#124

Post by jonemo »

djim wrote: post #83

this is a feature. it's actually pretty awesome for setting up quick meetings. It's a function of the "Quick add" feature that carries over into the title of the event: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604?hl=en Edit: I am very familiar with Google's products, having helped many businesses move to Google Apps through the years. "Features" like this often surprise users and it is not unusual to get negativ…

> Normally, once you show someone how it works and explain that it isn't likely to change, they adapt.

Soon we'll read reports of pipes bursting and apartments flooding because a Nest switched off the heating during winter after a Google calendar user added an event named "Feature freeze on home delivery project". Of course people will adapt and simply stop using temperature related keywords in their event titles?

My point being: Users shouldn't need to adapt to unexpected features. If such features exist, they are implemented badly or shouldn't exist in the first place. That's Interaction Design 101.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#125

Post by fastest963 »

aareet wrote: post #104

I discovered this by accident some time ago as well but I've always appreciated the convenience - when I add an event using the Quick Add dialog, it's very useful for me to be able to say "Movie Night with alice@example.com" and have it show up on Alice's calendar automatically. I use it all the time at work and at home and it saves me time from having to go to the dedicated event creation page to add people.

I don't think anyone is arguing the potential usefulness of the feature. It'd just be nice to know when its going to happen and have an alert box verifying that you actually wanted to add the user to the event. The alert box could even have an "Always do this" option.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#126

Post by jlees »

oshineye wrote: post #109
raverbashing wrote: post #66

So the way to solve this is to create a note on my calendar with "Remind to complain about this to vic.gundotra@google.com larry.page@google.com" ?

Google doesn't care about any of this, otherwise it would have been fixed in 2010. But if you really want to add them their e-mail addresses are: vicg@google.com page@google.com The calendar is going to be replaced by Timely, the next generation version (more feature-rich then the current one) Bigtop will replace the GMail interface.

Ah yes, fun when your CEO's email address is the same as the name of a product. I worked on +Pages, and we'd constantly be adding +page@google.com to discussions in Google Docs by mistake. ^_^

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#127

Post by stevep98 »

This reminds me of the interesting security implementation in Netscape Calendar. Among the interesting security practices:

- the server sends the (obscured) password to the client, so the client can check it

- if you want to look at another person's calendar, the server will send you the person's entire calendar, with the 'public/private' flag of each entry. It's up to the client to decide whether to show the user each entry.

- If you click on another person's private entry, the calendar data was copied to the clipboard. Paste it somewhere to view the details.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#128

Post by blueskin_ »

aniket_ray wrote: post #93
blueskin_ wrote: post #25

>Google really needs to work harder at protecting the privacy of its users. They would need to start protecting it first.

Google does work extremely hard trying to protect the privacy of its users. Yes, we might miss the boat sometimes but let's not make blanket statements like yours. D: I work for Google.

User privacy against other people? I actually mildly agree, but no more than any other company.

User privacy against the NSA? No. Any company with ethics would have gone public with PRISM.

User privacy against google's analytics and targeted advertising? Definitely not. Users are the product as far as google is concerned. Why else would they have privacy options shrink monthly, close well-used and liked services like Reader (disclosure: I never used Reader), and spend so much time forcing people into google+ against their wishes? Combine that with the latest anti-privacy features in Android 4.4 and google's creeping "you must use your real name" and it's about as far from privacy as you can get.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#129

Post by donquichotte »

brudgers wrote: post #38

Privacy, where it exists, creates impedance in Google's cash flow because it requires designing for some n sigma tail where n does not entail statistical significance and the case analysis must be very fine grained. Google doesn't have a category labeled "private" information". It never has and creating one is not planned. Privacy is not amenable to computer science. It is a social concept not a technical one. The cl…

"it requires designing for some n sigma tail where n does not entail statistical significance and the case analysis must be very fine grained"

What does this mean?

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#130

Post by josephlord »

laumars wrote: post #52
SunboX wrote: post #2

Btw. ownCloud 6.0.1 was released yesterday: http://owncloud.org/releases/Changelog

Personally I prefer 'Pydio' (formerly AjaXplorer): http://pyd.io/ Though I do also run ownCloud for automatic photo uploads from my phone

Despite the name Pydio seems to be developed in PHP too.
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