googling considered harmful
Virtually every Internet user on the planet uses the powerful free tools offered by a handful of information service providers in many aspects of their personal and professional lives. As a result, users and organizations are freely providing unprecedented amounts of sensitive information in return for such services as Internet search, email, mapping, blog hosting, instant messaging and language translation. Traditional security measures, such as cryptography and network firewalls, are largely ineffective because of the implicit trust paradigm with the service provider. In this paper, we directly address this problem by providing a threat analysis framework of information disclosure vectors, including fingerprinting of individuals and groups based on their online activities, examine the effectiveness of existing privacy countermeasures and clearly outline the critical future work required to protect our corporate, organizational and individual privacy when using these services.
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