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>We made Google+ with privacy in mind and therefore keep this API’s log data for only two weeks. That means we cannot confirm which users were impacted by this
by Bhilai 8y ago
>We made Google+ with privacy in mind and therefore keep this API’s log data for only two weeks. That means we cannot confirm which users were impacted by this bug.
Wait, so they only keep two weeks worth of logs and within these logs they did not find anyone abusing this flaw. How can they be certain for any time period from two week prior ?
- ismail 8y agoWow. “We made Google+ with privacy in mind and therefore keep this API’s log data for only two weeks.” The wording of this is really pushing the boundary of plausibility. I fail to understand the logic of how this would protect privacy? Access logs with no profile data logged would not compromise privacy would it? Can anyone confirm the timing of the google blog post? It seems the WSJ article was posted at a similar time. This leads me to believe that the most likely reason we are hearing about this now is due to comment requests from the WSJ. WHEN Goog realised it was out they published. Goog is trying to avoid using the words Data breach as they may get into hot water in EU. Love how it is buried in the article. My guess is a similar thing has been happening with android permissions. Data has been leaking through that they have just not admitted to it.
- advisedwang 8y ago> Access logs with no profile data logged would not compromise privacy would it? True, but access logs without profile data would prevent you know _which_ profiles were accessed. This matches with the actual claim in the article that they would be "unable to determine which users were affected"
- mashlol 8y agoRight, but the only "profile data" they would need to add to the logs to know, would be a user ID. Not really any private info.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- halflings 8y agoUser IDs are definitely private info, since they'd allow you to follow a user's behaviour etc.
- flukus 8y ago"user 1234567 viewed post 89564385943" I can see how that's private info, but would this be: "client x viewed user 1234567's profile"
- wolco 8y agoNeither are private info. Private in theop law sense.
- saagarjha 8y agoSure, if user 1234567 isn’t particularly popular.
- gdfasfklshg4 8y agoIf the user id can be joined with other data to give a name or similar then it is considered personally identifying in terms of GDPR. I am not a lawyer. You should hire an appropriately qualified lawyer to review your data hygiene practices.
- MertsA 8y ago>Goog is trying to avoid using the words Data breach as they may get into hot water in EU. As far as GDPR goes technically this breach happened right before they would have faced large repercussions from it.
- sipos 8y agoIt sounds like it came up as a result of their Project Strobe audit. I would guess they launched this project precisely because the penalties were about to get bigger and they knew they had skeletons.
- masonic 8y agoThe wording of this is really pushing the boundary of plausibility. Maybe Google is running short of disk space.
- skbly7 8y agoThe company which consider every single bit of data as "gold" decided not to keep their API's access log > 2 weeks? wow!
- nil_pointer 8y agoI too find Google only keeping 2 weeks of logs unbelievable.
- vkou 8y agoThe regulatory costs of GDPR mean that for every piece of log data, you want to think about whether or not you really want to keep it. If you don't have a good business case for keeping it, you're often better off erring on the side of deletion.
- p49k 8y agoBoth the breach and the fix happened months before GDPR went into effect, though.
- dannyw 8y agoGenerally you want to build systems in compliance of future regulations before they kick in. GDPR at big companies is a multi year effort.
- fixermark 8y agoEven before the GDPR, Google had to contend with the NSA / GCHQ illicit access events and the China hack. They had plenty of experience to suggest to them that keeping highly-detailed logs around indefinitely could do more harm to their users than good.
- puzzle 8y agoYou might find it surprising, but at Google it's common to do things like not returning anything when aggregating data from a small number of users. That's before even looking at projects like RAPPOR or ESA. Source: I had access to sensitive data many years ago.
- adrianmonk 8y agoDevelopers have a natural, and understandable, urge to include data in the logs that they need for debugging. If you purge logs, it is simpler and easier to have higher confidence that you are retaining only the data you intended to retain.
- Dylan16807 8y agoWhy would someone abusing this API stop doing so? If nobody did so for the two weeks prior to the fix, it's a very reasonable guess that roughly nobody did so ever. It doesn't sound like the logs are detailed enough to prove the antecedent, though, so it doesn't really matter if the logic is sound.
- ssijak 8y agoGoogle and privacy in the same sentence.. and a clumsy one indeed..