In a privacy error that underscores some of the biggest problems surrounding cloud-based services, Google has sent a notice to a number of users of its Document and Spreadsheets products stating that it may have inadvertently shared some of their documents with contacts who were never granted access to them.

According to the notice, this sharing was limited to people “with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document” – a vague statement that sounds like it could add up to quite a few people. The notice states that only text documents and presentations are affected, not spreadsheets, and provides links to each of the user’s documents that may have been shared in error

Google has confirmed that the note is real, and says that it was an isolated incident affecting less than .05% of all documents. The damage may not be widespread, but it’s still an unsettling lapse in security.

Here’s the letter in full:

Dear Google Docs user,

We wanted to let you know about a recent issue with your Google Docs account. We’ve identified and fixed a bug which may have caused you to share some of your documents without your knowledge. This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document. The issue only occurred if you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and changed the sharing permissions. This issue affected documents and presentations, but not spreadsheets.

To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually. For your reference, we’ve listed below the documents identified as being affected.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this issue may have caused. We want to assure you that we are treating this issue with the highest priority.

The Google Docs Team

In short, this is a massive blunder on Google’s part. I fully appreciate the lengths Google has gone to to offer a wide array of helpful online services, many of which are free of charge. But this error highlights why cloud-based services scare many people. Regardless of what a site’s posted rules and policies are, a technical glitch is all it takes to expose your sensitive data.
A Google spokesperson has confirmed that the note is real:

We fixed the bug, which affected less than 0.05% of documents, and removed any collaborators. We also contacted the users who were affected to notify them of the bug and to identify which of their documents may have been affected. We have extensive safeguards in place to protect all documents, and are confident this was an isolated incident.
Read more :
How Google got to know about the error

TCS Likely To Lay Off 1,300 Staffers

India’s biggest software exporter by sales, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), will lay off less than a percent of its global workforce over the next few months, as these employees failed to meet performance standards, a company spokesperson said.

This roughly works out to 1,300. The company has a total employee count of around 1.3 lakh.

IT companies are adopting stringent appraisal, cost-trimming and productivity boosting measures as they grapple with the global economic slow down.

TCS employees said on condition of anonymity that lay-offs have started at the company’s development centres in Chennai, where over 200 employees have been asked to leave in the last fortnight.

Source: The Economic Times

Google will begin to offer browser-based offline access to its Gmail Webmail application, a much-awaited feature.

This functionality, which will allow people to use the Gmail interface when disconnected from the Internet, has been expected since mid-2007.

That’s when Google introduced Gears, a browser plug-in designed to provide offline access to Web-hosted applications like Gmail.

Gears is currently used for offline access to several Web applications from Google, like the Reader RSS manager and the Docs word processor, and from other providers like Zoho, which uses it for offline access to its e-mail and word processing browser-based applications.

Rajen Sheth, senior product manager for Google Apps, said that applying Gears to Gmail has been a very complex task, primarily because of the high volume of messages accounts can store. “Gmail was a tough hurdle,” he said.

Google ruled out the option of letting users replicate their entire Gmail inboxes to their PCs, which in many cases would translate into gigabytes of data flowing to people’s hard drives. It instead developed algorithms that will automatically determine which messages should be downloaded to PCs, taking into consideration a variety of factors that reflect their level of importance to the user, he said. At this point, end-users will not be able to tweak these settings manually.

“We had to make it such that we’re managing a sizable amount of information offline and doing it well in a way that’s seamless to the end-user,” he said.

For example, in Gmail, users can put labels on messages, as well as tag them with stars to indicate their importance, and Google can use that information to determine which messages to download. Sheth estimates that in most cases Gmail will download several thousand messages, preferring those that are more recent as well. Depending on the amount of messages users have on their accounts, they may get downloads going back two months or two years, he said.

Google will begin to roll out the Gmail offline functionality Tuesday evening and expects to make it available to everybody in a few days, whether they use Gmail in its standalone version or as part of the Apps collaboration and communication suite for organizations.

While the feature was “rigorously” tested internally at Google, it is a first, early release upon which Google expects to iterate and improve on. That’s why it’s being released under the Google Labs label. Users are encouraged to offer Google feedback.

Users have been able to manage their Gmail accounts offline via other methods for years, since Gmail supports the POP and IMAP protocols that let people download and send out messages using desktop e-mail software like Microsoft Outlook and others.

However, the Gears implementation will let people work within the Gmail interface without the need for a separate PC application. When offline, messages will be put in a Gears browser queue, and the desktop and online versions of the accounts will be synchronized automatically when users connect to the Internet again. This will come in handy for people who travel a lot and often find themselves without Internet access, Sheth said.