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Tag: Google Groups

  • Japanese Officials Confuse Google Groups Privacy Settings, Leak Internal Trade Memos

    It appears that some government officials in Japan have found themselves scrambling after a Google Groups privacy misstep allowed internal memos to be open and available for anyone to browse at their convenience.

    According to the AFP, the incident occurred within the Environmental Ministry. Unaware that the default setting for Google Groups in public (in terms of who can see group content), these officials allowed access to private documents. What exactly did the Japanese government allow to leak? Apparently, the internal memos included details of negotiations for an international mercury trade treaty. The memos also contained exchanges between the Japanese government and that of Switzerland and Norway.

    When creating a Google Group, one of the first steps in selecting the group’s basic permissions. The default setting with any new Google Group is that anyone can view its content. Of course, with a few clicks, you can turn your group private – but apparently this default setting has been tripping up people in the Japanese government.

    According to a spokesperson for the Environment Ministry, the memos were not “top secret” – but they definitely weren’t supposed to be made public either.

    The AFP quotes the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, who claims that through its investigations, it discovered over 6,000 cases of governmental information being make public in this manner. This includes hospital records, education records, and even lists of political donors.

    Strangely enough, Yomiuri Shimbun also admitted that its own journalists had been fooled by Google Groups’ default privacy settings – exposing not-yet-published stories.

    Now, imagine that.

  • Google Groups Gets An Update, Proving Google Still Cares

    Google announced today that it is retiring the old Google Groups interface, and is making the new one available to everyone. The company has been busy updating the product over the past year, and now all users can experience the fruits of the company’s labor.

    “One of the recently improved features is the ability to create an inbox that allows you to collaboratively share, distribute and track responsibilities with others,” says Google Groups product manager Ryan Falor. “Imagine you and a few co-workers are organizing an event for your global team and want a single email address to coordinate with vendors, attendees, and speakers. Members of the group can work together to manage email, assign items to each other, and mark items resolved. This can be a great feature for teams seeking a really simple way to get things done without sharing passwords or losing track.”

    “Additionally, there are several new moderation tools to make managing your forum easier and faster,” adds Falor. “For example, you can now use canned responses in forums and use streamlined options to make moderating forum posts easier. And if you are on the go, you can browse and moderate your groups with our mobile website.”

    Google Groups

    In a help center article, Google provides how tos for managing groups, participating in groups, and creating groups, as well as policies on abuse and terms of service.

    Google Groups has been around for many years, and is not a product that Google makes announcements about very often. Users will no doubt be happy to see that Google still cares about the product, considering the coming shut-down of Google Reader, another popular product that Google rarely added features to.