The cloud computing concept takes another hit. Techcrunch dropped a story this morning on more holes found in the popular online application Google Docs. This news arrives right on the heels of another security problem discovered earlier this month.
In short, images embedded in Google Docs could be accessed outside Google Docs itself because the images are uploaded to another server. I’ve seen something like this myself because if you use Blogger, your uploaded images show up in your Picassa account.
If you share a document carrying a diagram, the person will be able to view previous versions of that diagram whether you want them to or not.
Finally, removing another user’s access to a document doesn’t always ensure that they can’t access that document again later.
These flaws seem serious enough to put at risk the ability of libraries to comply with relevant privacy rules as to patrons if Google Docs is in the mix. Free (as in freedom and as in beer) alternatives like Citadel may prove profitable for libraries to evaluate.
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