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Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#11

Post by camus2 »

est wrote: post #5
SunboX wrote: post #2

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

God I love the idea of ownCloud so much but secretly hope it's not written in PHP. I run a wordpress site for 3 years, and one day a hacker took my site over with a bug from a plugin.

well, you had a problem with a badly written wordpress plugin ,not PHP. or are you saying PHP is insecure and no insecure code can be written in other plateforms ? for a project to be popular amongs developers and hobbyists , it has to be written in PHP, because PHP is easy to deploy even if you dont know PHP.

By the way, most CMSes on other plateforms assume you know the language , PHP CMSes dont, so maybe there is some effort to be made on these plateform to make thing easier or write better docs.

Wordpress would not be popular if it was in Python,Ruby or Java. Anyway the issue is with Wordpress plugin architecture , not PHP.

A clean plugin architecture would require some kind of DSL instead of plain PHP.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#12

Post by nmc »

ritikk3 wrote: post #4

A couple of things: That is expected behaviour, email address in reminders applies coordination. It's basically parsing your command correctly 'email this address'. Second, the zdnet post you link to towards the end is full of inaccuracies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107554

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.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#15

Post by ritikk4 »

nmc wrote: post #12
ritikk3 wrote: post #4

A couple of things: That is expected behaviour, email address in reminders applies coordination. It's basically parsing your command correctly 'email this address'. Second, the zdnet post you link to towards the end is full of inaccuracies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107554

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.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#16

Post by aviraldg »

This is not a "private information leak." It's expected behaviour. Entering information in that field to create a new event results in Google Calendar parsing your information as best as it can, to automatically set things like the date, time, event description and of course, the participants (the apparent privacy leak here.)

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#17

Post by mverwijs »

est wrote: post #5
SunboX wrote: post #2

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

God I love the idea of ownCloud so much but secretly hope it's not written in PHP. I run a wordpress site for 3 years, and one day a hacker took my site over with a bug from a plugin.

> hope it's not written in PHP.

It is though.

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#18

Post by ritikk4 »

amirmc wrote: post #10
ritikk3 wrote: post #4

A couple of things: That is expected behaviour, email address in reminders applies coordination. It's basically parsing your command correctly 'email this address'. Second, the zdnet post you link to towards the end is full of inaccuracies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107554

It's evidently not 'expected' behaviour from the point of view of the user. Just because you happen to put an email address in the title of a calendar event doesn't imply that I expect the software to go and send messages on my behalf.

Then we disagree. Especially if it's in the title it indicates you want to coordinate with the email you just entered.

A proper way to do it is, Title: "Email Alice", Description: "alice@example.com".

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#19

Post by Steuard »

ritikk3 wrote: post #4

A couple of things: That is expected behaviour, email address in reminders applies coordination. It's basically parsing your command correctly 'email this address'. Second, the zdnet post you link to towards the end is full of inaccuracies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107554

"Intended" isn't the same as "expected"!

As a user, I would never have guessed that Calendar would do this. It frightens me in much the same ways that Buzz did. (And Buzz did leak some data that I considered very private.)

Re: Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

#20

Post by Elessar »

aviraldg wrote: post #16

This is not a "private information leak." It's expected behaviour. Entering information in that field to create a new event results in Google Calendar parsing your information as best as it can, to automatically set things like the date, time, event description and of course, the participants (the apparent privacy leak here.)

If you're aware of the feature, it's not a privacy leak. If you aren't, it could be very damaging.

It would have been nice if the first time the Calendar parsed and sent emails on behalf of a user, it would ask if this is what they wanted. It doesn't have to bug them ever again, but that's a single instance of training that would minimize confusion.

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