14 ms·

Google Calendar Unexpectedly Leaks Private Information

287 points by edent 13y ago

SunboX 13y ago
Btw. ownCloud 6.0.1 was released yesterday: http://owncloud.org/releases/Changelog http://owncloud.org/releases/Changelog
- est 13y ago
  God I love the idea of ownCloud so much but secretly hope it's not written in PHP. I run a wordpress site for 3 years, and one day a hacker took my site over with a bug from a plugin.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - rabino 13y ago
    Indeed, that's proof that PHP is bad. And that all other frameworks in other languages don't have bugs that can be exploited.
    - krapp 13y ago
      (cough yaml parser cough) ... indeed.
  - SunboX 13y ago
    Something like this will happen with any bad written code. It's not PHP related. But you are right, PHP makes it easy to write bad code. There's no "security" layer build in. I hope ownCloud gets public enought to be secure. If more eyes look at the source they will hopfully do a good job.
  - camus2 13y ago
    well, you had a problem with a badly written wordpress plugin ,not PHP. or are you saying PHP is insecure and no insecure code can be written in other plateforms ? for a project to be popular amongs developers and hobbyists , it has to be written in PHP, because PHP is easy to deploy even if you dont know PHP. By the way, most CMSes on other plateforms assume you know the language , PHP CMSes dont, so maybe there is some effort to be made on these plateform to make thing easier or write better docs. Wordpress would not be popular if it was in Python,Ruby or Java. Anyway the issue is with Wordpress plugin architecture , not PHP. A clean plugin architecture would require some kind of DSL instead of plain PHP.
    - est 13y ago
      > you had a problem with a badly written wordpress plugin The plugin is top 10 popular one > because PHP is easy to deploy even if you dont know PHP. Wordpress has clean URL, but under the hood many .php files are directly accessible via URL, so hacker found a exploit, crafted a parameter aginst one particular .php, and got in. The solution? Limit URL entry to only one .php file (like index.php), more rewrite configs and mod_security. So you lost the benefit of copy-to-update, it becomes just as hard like other language/frameworks. As ownCloud community grows, I think this problem will surf again and it will end up like many PHP forum/CMS today. You can put up a usable site very quickly, but once or few months you have to patch the system, and many plugins you need most are abandon-ware.
      - krapp 13y ago
        What plugin was it, and did you report the issue, and was this recent?
      - dspillett 13y ago
        * > > you had a problem with a badly written wordpress plugin > The plugin is top 10 popular one* Popular !== Good (where in this case good is in the context of being well written) > so hacker found a exploit, crafted a parameter aginst one particular .php, and got in That could happen with almost any laguage/framework though. While PHP makes it easy to write bad code (as do other options) it doesn't make it impossible to write secure code and you can't blame PHP and/or Wordpress for every bad plugin out there, even the massively popular ones.
  - mverwijs 13y ago
    > hope it's not written in PHP. It is though.
  - carsonreinke 13y ago
    What are you talking about? You have written off PHP because of a WordPress plugin issue.
  - laumars 13y ago
    I hate PHP as a language, I really do, but bugs can happen in any language (eg C++ bugs are exploited all the time to gain machine access). Plus when you get a platform as popular as Wordpress, you'll find that it will constantly be under attack from 'hackers' who bank on people being slow to update their plugins. With regards to ownCloud, that is PHP by the way.
- OGC 13y ago
  It's written in PHP and had numerous showstopping bugs unfortunately (atleast when i tried it out, which was 2 months ago). Syncing didn't even work. I'm running Seafile at the moment, http://seafile.com/en/home/ http://seafile.com/en/home/ which seems to work OK.
- laumars 13y ago
  Personally I prefer 'Pydio' (formerly AjaXplorer): http://pyd.io/ http://pyd.io/ Though I do also run ownCloud for automatic photo uploads from my phone
  - josephlord 13y ago
    Despite the name Pydio seems to be developed in PHP too.
    - laumars 13y ago
      Which changes nothing.
      - josephlord 13y ago
        It changes nothing but it is a fact. The original ancestor of this thread was put off Owncloud by the fact it was PHP and Pydia was offered as an alternative. The name suggest at least to me that it would be Python based. Now whether the PHP should put us off is a separate question. I have probably unfair doubts about the quality of things developed in PHP based worrying about the sort of people who would choose it when they have a free choice (see fractal of bad design post). However I personally don't want to learn PHP so I would prefer something in Python, Rails or possibly even Node (I've a feeling that I'm going to need to learn Javascript one day), Java, C or C+++ so that the barrier to me tinkering/fixing is lower.
        laumars 13y ago
        You read too much into things: > The original ancestor of this thread was put off Owncloud by the fact it was PHP and Pydia was offered as an alternative. No, I said I preferred Pydio over ownCloud. You added the subtext to my post. > The name suggest at least to me that it would be Python based. Only if you place too much emphasis on naming conventions. Names are in fact just arbitrary labels, thus not everything that begins with "py" has to be written in Python. > Now whether the PHP should put us off is a separate question. I have probably unfair doubts about the quality of things developed in PHP based worrying about the sort of people who would choose it when they have a free choice (see fractal of bad design post). I'm aware of the Fractal Of Bad Design blog post and you're using that to justify your conclusion that 2+2=5. Just because a language might be -in our opinion- complete garbage to develop in, it doesn't mean all code developed in that language is garbage. And you're also making the assumption that all developers choose PHP because it's easy; where as many of these projects are actually written in PHP because it makes it easier for end users to deploy. > C or C+++ so that the barrier to me tinkering/fixing is lower. If you think writing a web application in C or C++ (two pluses) lowers the barrier of things that can go wrong or the amount of tinkering you'd need to do, then you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Sorry, but that last part just struck me as the stupidest thing I've read in a long time.
- osxrand 13y ago
  I haven't tried it since the previous version, but syncing a few directories with thousands of small files completely brought owncloud to its knees. The type of database used didn't matter, the syncing just started taking longer and longer, and because it hadn't started an auto sync in the last 10 (I think it's default time is) minutes, it would start another and essentially never be able to finish attempting to sync. Apart from that issue, I thought it was quite good, will have to give it another try.
slazaro 13y ago
The worst thing about things like this happening is the feeling of helplessness when you can't reach anyone in the company or when they just say "it's not a problem".
- edent 13y ago
  To be fair - they were very quick at responding and asked questions about my disclosure. The security team is very responsive but for normal users there is no way to communicate with Google.
  - username223 13y ago
    This seems like a business opportunity -- come up with a steady stream of "security issues," then use the resulting access to provide paid customer service for GOOG.
    - thomasahle 13y ago
      You can get great paid GOOGLE customer service if you just sign up for Google Apps.
      - hippee-lee 13y ago
        I did sign up. My customer service experience was robotic at best and didn't help me. I canceled the account.
      - maaaats 13y ago
        Well, it takes me approx. 1 minute to have a MS rep chatting with me when I have problems. Even when paying Google, it's impossible to get answers quick. And often the answers are just templates until you have bothered them enough to give you an actual reply.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Or the company shill shows up and burns through four HN accounts trying to spread FUD. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk2 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk2 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk3 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk3 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk4 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk4 (Should I add the 5th link or wait for him to create that ID as well?)
ritikk3 13y ago
A couple of things: That is expected behaviour, email address in reminders applies coordination. It's basically parsing your command correctly 'email this address'. Second, the zdnet post you link to towards the end is full of inaccuracies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107554
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- amirmc 13y ago
  It's evidently not 'expected' behaviour from the point of view of the user. Just because you happen to put an email address in the title of a calendar event doesn't imply that I expect the software to go and send messages on my behalf.
  - ritikk4 13y ago
    Then we disagree. Especially if it's in the title it indicates you want to coordinate with the email you just entered. A proper way to do it is, Title: "Email Alice", Description: "alice@example.com".
    - ColinWright 13y ago
      When the user gets unexpected behaviour doing something that many believe to be reasonable, telling them they're doing it wrong is really bad user interaction. You can't change the behaviour of users, but you can make your software easier to use and more predictable in its behaviour.
    - Shooti 13y ago
      A good UI would make it explicitly clear by highlighting the email address and/or by auto adding an explicit entry to the guest list. At present there's no way to predict the behavior until after the fact. Something with that much consequence (sending an email to an unintended recipient) should never be done silently. By all means take the initiative with autofill etc, but the user should have the final say. If the supposed design revolution within Google (http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016268/google-the-redesign http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016268/google-the-redesign) isn't just for show, the Calendar team (assuming there even is an ongoing team) clearly hasn't been touched by it and that ought to be corrected.
perfunctory 13y ago
Should the word "unexpectedly" in the title be changed to "predictably"?
- afhsfsfdsss88 13y ago
  I was thinking 'naturally'.
  - qwerty_asdf 13y ago
    Makes perfect sense!
aviraldg 13y ago
This is not a "private information leak." It's expected behaviour. Entering information in that field to create a new event results in Google Calendar parsing your information as best as it can, to automatically set things like the date, time, event description and of course, the participants (the apparent privacy leak here.)
- Elessar 13y ago
  If you're aware of the feature, it's not a privacy leak. If you aren't, it could be very damaging. It would have been nice if the first time the Calendar parsed and sent emails on behalf of a user, it would ask if this is what they wanted. It doesn't have to bug them ever again, but that's a single instance of training that would minimize confusion.
  - aviraldg 13y ago
    https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604 https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604
    - Anderkent 13y ago
      Except that says: 'Who: This should begin with 'with' followed by a list of email addresses; these are added to the guest list.' 'Email alice@example.com' does not match this spec.
  - kevinjohnson 13y ago
    Agreed. A simple confirmation popup is a quick fix which might prevent a lot of headaches.
- edent 13y ago
  Why then, does a notification dialogue box pop up when you enter the information on the calendar overview page? Evidently, someone thought it was a good idea to warn there that an invite was going to be sent. So why does no warning pop up when you're in the "Edit Event" view? There's a discrepancy here. See my video in the blog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqjYb6eiMWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqjYb6eiMWE
blueskin_ 13y ago
>Google really needs to work harder at protecting the privacy of its users. They would need to start protecting it first.
- aniket_ray 13y ago
  Google does work extremely hard trying to protect the privacy of its users. Yes, we might miss the boat sometimes but let's not make blanket statements like yours. D: I work for Google.
  - UweSchmidt 13y ago
    Would you be so kind and provide your definition of "privacy"? The first thing that comes to mind is how much information about users Google itself stores and processes. This happened earlier and faster than people learned and understood the consequences of. The next thing would be how the real name policy can make it difficult to keep someones Youtube-habits separated from a gmail/g+ account. For you, do these two concerns fall under the term "privacy", or how do you reconcile all of that with your claim "protect the privacy of the users"?
    - aniket_ray 13y ago
      I am not looking for a debate here but your points are related to Google's algorithms analyzing user data. Google developers do not have access to that data and Google does not reveal data to anyone. Yes, I consider our handling of this data a success of our privacy engineers.
      - UweSchmidt 13y ago
        Thanks for the answer. I understand that times have changed and that revealing that you're from Google is not as fun as it used to be. The distinction you seem to be making between data that Google has and data that is "revealed to anyone" is misleading in my opinion. No matter who has the data, "privacy" is concerned. Also I need to call you out on your blanket statements that Google developers have no access to that data (clearly, some would, as part of their jobs, also [1]), and that data is not revealed to anyone (seriously?). As of January 2014, this position is not defensible and you might have to face a more nuanced, and possibly inconvenient reality. http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...
leephillips 13y ago
This article has pretty much the same content as my article from March, 2010: http://lee-phillips.org/gcaldisaster/ http://lee-phillips.org/gcaldisaster/ Even the titles are similar: this one's called "Another Google Privacy Flaw"; mine was called "Another Google Privacy Disaster Brewing". So people have been complaining about this since at least 2010, and Google by now has pretty firmly established that they don't care.
- edent 13y ago
  Hi Lee, Although I did search for information about this issue, I didn't come across your blog. I'll update mine with a link to yours. T
  - leephillips 13y ago
    No worries - I didn't mean to imply that you copied me, but just to point out persistent this problem has been, and to underline the fact that Google doesn't consider it an issue.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- edent 13y ago
  The recipient's calendar. So, let's say example.org run an Exchange server. I create a reminder saying "Tell phil@example.org he's a jerk". Phil will now see that in his Outlook calendar.
  - username223 13y ago
    Right. So you write "Tell Phil at example dot org he's a jerk," or "Tell phil, example, org he's a jerk," or something else that makes sense to humans but not machines.
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      That's terrible UX though. The point of using a computer is to make things easier - at least on the first try the program needs to ask you if you wish to enable automated invites (it could offer the option to "enable automated invites for only this address" too).
      - username223 13y ago
        Indeed it's awful. I just thought it was ironic that email obfuscation, a tactic used against malicious address-harvesting programs, would also be useful against "helpful" obnoxiousness.
username223 13y ago
Spammers gonna spam. Those around in the 90s should remember the usual email address obfuscation techniques.
brudgers 13y ago
Privacy, where it exists, creates impedance in Google's cash flow because it requires designing for some n sigma tail where n does not entail statistical significance and the case analysis must be very fine grained. Google doesn't have a category labeled "private" information". It never has and creating one is not planned. Privacy is not amenable to computer science. It is a social concept not a technical one. The closest technical concern is security. It scales and so that is where Google devotes resources. As far as Google is concerned: All your bit are belong to us.
- ritikk4 13y ago
  Generally speaking you might be right, but I fail to see the profit motive behind this specific case. It's just a UX disagreement it seems.
  - brudgers 13y ago
    This is simply one expression of the corporate protocols in which privacy does not exist. It's not a bug. It's not an honest mistake. It is an implementation detail of a higher level abstraction.
    - ritikk5 13y ago
      ... or it's just the statistical certainty of having a disagreement over a feature implementation in a multi-featured app which in turn is a part of larger app suite, which is a part of a even bigger software infrastructure.
    - Atroxide 13y ago
      Of Course this isn't a bug- It's a feature. the only problem is that there isn't a confirmation screen when it detects that you have put a person's email address in the incorrect spot. All that is needed is for a popup to ask "Would you like to send this event to email@example.com?".
- Pxtl 13y ago
  Yes, but how does this particular privacy leak benefit Google? Google wants to have all your information themselves. Why would they want to give that info to your boss? This sounds like somebody being really clever and whipping up a fancy feature, but forgetting to finish it with proper meeting requests and a freaking confirmation box and whatnot. The idea itself is good - check for email addresses in meeting information and tying those to a Google account as invites. The problem is that the user isn't asked.
pgl 13y ago
One annoying thing about this is that it allows spammers to automatically add events to your calendar.
- ZoFreX 13y ago
  So THAT'S how they've been doing it. For the past week I've been inundated with spam events on my Google Calendar, it's been winding me right up.
  - gms7777 13y ago
    Theres an option in your settings for google calendar that is something along the lines of "Automatically add invitations to Calendar" that you can turn off, and I think it will fix that problem for you.
raverbashing 13y ago
So the way to solve this is to create a note on my calendar with "Remind to complain about this to vic.gundotra@google.com larry.page@google.com" ?
- master-ruse-man 13y ago
  What about we flood their calendar about this? ;)
  - frandroid 13y ago
    http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/012/132/thatsthejoke.jpg http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/012/132/tha...
  - diminoten 13y ago
    Pretty sure this is illegal. :(
  - deveshparekh 13y ago
    Just in case anybody took parent seriously, you shouldn't do this for the same reason you shouldn't flood their email inboxes about this. They will just mark your calendar invitation as spam.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if there are hardcoded rules that guard senior Google execs against such inadvertent (or by design, take your pick) communications from hoi polloi that uses their products.
  - raverbashing 13y ago
    I'm skeptical A whitelist wouldn't work, because these people need to be contacted from the outside, from people with gmail addresses (usually goes through a secretary though) A dedicated (unfiltered) internal email sounds more likely, or just routing directly google.com to google.com addresses. But then again this is google and maybe internally it's only Hangouts
ddalex 13y ago
A good friend told me once: " the moment you enter info in an electronic device, you can assume it's public ". It was in response to me getting a pic of him wearing red thongs (dont' ask), but the point stands in regards to Google, any email account, your PC, your phone, and everything else.
- zorked 13y ago
  I worry about an overly defeatist point of view here. Just because the security situation is so bad right now does not mean that it is unavoidably so.
- DanBC 13y ago
  That is good advice. Let's see a change to all the peivacy policies so it is made clearer. "Anything you enter might be leaked. We might not warn you before we leak your information. We have complex confusing interactions between your accounts on all our services, and we hide the settings pages, but if any information is lealed then LOL that's your fault". I kind of feel sorry for Google here - it's the 21st centuary and people are still persecuted for their sex or sexual preference. Part of the outrage is misplaced here - why the hell should she feel the need to hide such a fundamental aspect of herself from her colleagues? But then again, who cares what the reason was? She wasn't trolling or abusive or trying to male the Internet a worse place, so let her use whatever name she wants and stop linking everything together. There are much better ways of doing unified accounts that the mess that Google has given us.
jbb555 13y ago
I'm gradually stopping using all of google's services. One by one they either turn out to have "features" like this, or they "improve" them into being horrible. There isn't much left I use any more. And I used to like google a lot... Times change
xenophanes 13y ago
does it really count as unexpected at this point?
djim 13y ago
this is a feature. it's actually pretty awesome for setting up quick meetings. It's a function of the "Quick add" feature that carries over into the title of the event: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604?hl=en https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604?hl=en Edit: I am very familiar with Google's products, having helped many businesses move to Google Apps through the years. "Features" like this often surprise users and it is not unusual to get negative reactions. Normally, once you show someone how it works and explain that it isn't likely to change, they adapt.
- bentcorner 13y ago
  Ugh, I understand that it can be useful for some people, but I find natural language parsing of calendar events intrusive and annoying. 99% of the time it ends up parsing a field incorrectly, and if I wanted to set a field it's on the form anyway, so why bother? In this case, why parse out an email address and send them an invite when there's an "invite" text box on the same page? If the only way to set the time, date and invite list was to have the subject line get parsed, it would be obvious that this sort of thing will occur. Honestly, to me this is a solution in search of a problem.
  - djim 13y ago
    but you can create an event from the calendar interface prior to going into the event interface. from the calendar interface, it only gives you the option of creating a title. so i can put meet with name@email.com and create the event. that's it. Google Calendar should TOTALLY notify you you are adding someone to the event and ask if you want to send an invite. Also, if you are in the events interface and add someone's email to the title, it should add that person to the guest list on the fly. It should do these things, but it doesn't. I think that is the root of the complaint, not the feature itself.
- glennos 13y ago
  My vote goes to 'feature' too. However, I didn't know about this behaviour, so perhaps Google should have a tooltip explaining what it parses.
- 13y ago
ujjwal_wadhawan 13y ago
Yes, It actually adds an invite in my other calender (other email account) without confirming. Surely a privacy issue.
Shank 13y ago
I'm going to take a stab here and say that "Automatically add invitations to my calendar" being set to yes is what allows you to be on the receiving end of this. Can someone try turning that setting off in the gear menu and repeating this? It would at least stop spammers (and people on HN from inviting execs to reminders about this).
PythonicAlpha 13y ago
That is one of the problems I see more and more often the last days: Applications try to be extra-clever (more clever than their users) and think 2 steps further ... thus doing more than the users said. So in my opinion, it is not only a privacy problem, but a problem of our "computing-" era. Applications get more and more clever, but in the effect they become extra-stupid, not doing what the user really wants, but doing what the programmer thought (or worse, some weird AI thought) could be right to do now. I think, the reason is, that somehow applications must more and more show that they are "better" than just simple eMail, or just simple groupware or just a simple (you name it), as it existed before and as thousands exists as open source apps. The way it goes, is adding some "extra benefit" (same as in the food area) to the applications. But sometimes the extra benefit plainly backfires. That's also the reason, I shiver when I think that the car industry wants cars that more and more take over control. That will become a big mess! I also will reduce my usage of Google products, because it becomes more and more "you have to do it the Google-way" products and I must say, that e.g. Gmail has worsen it's user experience over time ...
- genwin 13y ago
  > That's also the reason, I shiver when I think that the car industry wants cars that more and more take over control. That will become a big mess! It's only a matter of time before any traffic infraction anywhere results in an automatic debit from your bank account, and then Google lets everyone know, with a sad-face icon next to your name.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    Yes, and people that insist steering their car themselves will be punished by public opinion. They will be treated nearly the same way as Muslim looking people in US airports directly after 9/11.
jbsmith86 13y ago
when will it end?
aareet 13y ago
I discovered this by accident some time ago as well but I've always appreciated the convenience - when I add an event using the Quick Add dialog, it's very useful for me to be able to say "Movie Night with alice@example.com" and have it show up on Alice's calendar automatically. I use it all the time at work and at home and it saves me time from having to go to the dedicated event creation page to add people.
- fastest963 13y ago
  I don't think anyone is arguing the potential usefulness of the feature. It'd just be nice to know when its going to happen and have an alert box verifying that you actually wanted to add the user to the event. The alert box could even have an "Always do this" option.
cturhan 13y ago
My golden rule, never ever put any personal information on the web especially on google. If possible, don't even use your real name.
- scott_karana 13y ago
  Is your last name Turhan, by any chance? ;) (If you were being sarcastic, I rescind my comment)
CreakyParrot 13y ago
In a big-picture sense, it's only unexpected if one doesn't realize that privacy is inherently in conflict with their business model.
polemic 13y ago
I've had bad experiences with this "feature" lately too - scammers can pop notifications into my phone simply by "inviting" me to events. I have no idea that anything is afoot until my phone pings me the notification.
stevep98 13y ago
This reminds me of the interesting security implementation in Netscape Calendar. Among the interesting security practices: - the server sends the (obscured) password to the client, so the client can check it - if you want to look at another person's calendar, the server will send you the person's entire calendar, with the 'public/private' flag of each entry. It's up to the client to decide whether to show the user each entry. - If you click on another person's private entry, the calendar data was copied to the clipboard. Paste it somewhere to view the details.
petrel 13y ago
If this was any other company like Microsoft, Every one will enjoy.
edent 13y ago
A quick note to say I've received an email from Google - the calendar team are treating this as a bug and are implementing a fix. Hopefully it should make it a lot more obvious to users when a meeting invitation is about to be sent.

287 points by edent 13y ago

Btw. ownCloud 6.0.1 was released yesterday: http://owncloud.org/releases/Changelog http://owncloud.org/releases/Changelog

est 13y ago
God I love the idea of ownCloud so much but secretly hope it's not written in PHP. I run a wordpress site for 3 years, and one day a hacker took my site over with a bug from a plugin.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rabino 13y ago
  Indeed, that's proof that PHP is bad. And that all other frameworks in other languages don't have bugs that can be exploited.
  - krapp 13y ago
    (cough yaml parser cough) ... indeed.
- SunboX 13y ago
  Something like this will happen with any bad written code. It's not PHP related. But you are right, PHP makes it easy to write bad code. There's no "security" layer build in. I hope ownCloud gets public enought to be secure. If more eyes look at the source they will hopfully do a good job.
- camus2 13y ago
  well, you had a problem with a badly written wordpress plugin ,not PHP. or are you saying PHP is insecure and no insecure code can be written in other plateforms ? for a project to be popular amongs developers and hobbyists , it has to be written in PHP, because PHP is easy to deploy even if you dont know PHP. By the way, most CMSes on other plateforms assume you know the language , PHP CMSes dont, so maybe there is some effort to be made on these plateform to make thing easier or write better docs. Wordpress would not be popular if it was in Python,Ruby or Java. Anyway the issue is with Wordpress plugin architecture , not PHP. A clean plugin architecture would require some kind of DSL instead of plain PHP.
  - est 13y ago
    > you had a problem with a badly written wordpress plugin The plugin is top 10 popular one > because PHP is easy to deploy even if you dont know PHP. Wordpress has clean URL, but under the hood many .php files are directly accessible via URL, so hacker found a exploit, crafted a parameter aginst one particular .php, and got in. The solution? Limit URL entry to only one .php file (like index.php), more rewrite configs and mod_security. So you lost the benefit of copy-to-update, it becomes just as hard like other language/frameworks. As ownCloud community grows, I think this problem will surf again and it will end up like many PHP forum/CMS today. You can put up a usable site very quickly, but once or few months you have to patch the system, and many plugins you need most are abandon-ware.
    - krapp 13y ago
      What plugin was it, and did you report the issue, and was this recent?
    - dspillett 13y ago
      * > > you had a problem with a badly written wordpress plugin > The plugin is top 10 popular one* Popular !== Good (where in this case good is in the context of being well written) > so hacker found a exploit, crafted a parameter aginst one particular .php, and got in That could happen with almost any laguage/framework though. While PHP makes it easy to write bad code (as do other options) it doesn't make it impossible to write secure code and you can't blame PHP and/or Wordpress for every bad plugin out there, even the massively popular ones.
- mverwijs 13y ago
  > hope it's not written in PHP. It is though.
- carsonreinke 13y ago
  What are you talking about? You have written off PHP because of a WordPress plugin issue.
- laumars 13y ago
  I hate PHP as a language, I really do, but bugs can happen in any language (eg C++ bugs are exploited all the time to gain machine access). Plus when you get a platform as popular as Wordpress, you'll find that it will constantly be under attack from 'hackers' who bank on people being slow to update their plugins. With regards to ownCloud, that is PHP by the way.
OGC 13y ago
It's written in PHP and had numerous showstopping bugs unfortunately (atleast when i tried it out, which was 2 months ago). Syncing didn't even work. I'm running Seafile at the moment, http://seafile.com/en/home/ http://seafile.com/en/home/ which seems to work OK.
laumars 13y ago
Personally I prefer 'Pydio' (formerly AjaXplorer): http://pyd.io/ http://pyd.io/ Though I do also run ownCloud for automatic photo uploads from my phone
- josephlord 13y ago
  Despite the name Pydio seems to be developed in PHP too.
  - laumars 13y ago
    Which changes nothing.
    - josephlord 13y ago
      It changes nothing but it is a fact. The original ancestor of this thread was put off Owncloud by the fact it was PHP and Pydia was offered as an alternative. The name suggest at least to me that it would be Python based. Now whether the PHP should put us off is a separate question. I have probably unfair doubts about the quality of things developed in PHP based worrying about the sort of people who would choose it when they have a free choice (see fractal of bad design post). However I personally don't want to learn PHP so I would prefer something in Python, Rails or possibly even Node (I've a feeling that I'm going to need to learn Javascript one day), Java, C or C+++ so that the barrier to me tinkering/fixing is lower.
      - laumars 13y ago
        You read too much into things: > The original ancestor of this thread was put off Owncloud by the fact it was PHP and Pydia was offered as an alternative. No, I said I preferred Pydio over ownCloud. You added the subtext to my post. > The name suggest at least to me that it would be Python based. Only if you place too much emphasis on naming conventions. Names are in fact just arbitrary labels, thus not everything that begins with "py" has to be written in Python. > Now whether the PHP should put us off is a separate question. I have probably unfair doubts about the quality of things developed in PHP based worrying about the sort of people who would choose it when they have a free choice (see fractal of bad design post). I'm aware of the Fractal Of Bad Design blog post and you're using that to justify your conclusion that 2+2=5. Just because a language might be -in our opinion- complete garbage to develop in, it doesn't mean all code developed in that language is garbage. And you're also making the assumption that all developers choose PHP because it's easy; where as many of these projects are actually written in PHP because it makes it easier for end users to deploy. > C or C+++ so that the barrier to me tinkering/fixing is lower. If you think writing a web application in C or C++ (two pluses) lowers the barrier of things that can go wrong or the amount of tinkering you'd need to do, then you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Sorry, but that last part just struck me as the stupidest thing I've read in a long time.
osxrand 13y ago
I haven't tried it since the previous version, but syncing a few directories with thousands of small files completely brought owncloud to its knees. The type of database used didn't matter, the syncing just started taking longer and longer, and because it hadn't started an auto sync in the last 10 (I think it's default time is) minutes, it would start another and essentially never be able to finish attempting to sync. Apart from that issue, I thought it was quite good, will have to give it another try.

slazaro 13y ago

The worst thing about things like this happening is the feeling of helplessness when you can't reach anyone in the company or when they just say "it's not a problem".

edent 13y ago
To be fair - they were very quick at responding and asked questions about my disclosure. The security team is very responsive but for normal users there is no way to communicate with Google.
- username223 13y ago
  This seems like a business opportunity -- come up with a steady stream of "security issues," then use the resulting access to provide paid customer service for GOOG.
  - thomasahle 13y ago
    You can get great paid GOOGLE customer service if you just sign up for Google Apps.
    - hippee-lee 13y ago
      I did sign up. My customer service experience was robotic at best and didn't help me. I canceled the account.
    - maaaats 13y ago
      Well, it takes me approx. 1 minute to have a MS rep chatting with me when I have problems. Even when paying Google, it's impossible to get answers quick. And often the answers are just templates until you have bothered them enough to give you an actual reply.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Or the company shill shows up and burns through four HN accounts trying to spread FUD. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk2 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk2 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk3 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk3 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk4 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ritikk4 (Should I add the 5th link or wait for him to create that ID as well?)

ritikk3 13y ago

A couple of things: That is expected behaviour, email address in reminders applies coordination. It's basically parsing your command correctly 'email this address'. Second, the zdnet post you link to towards the end is full of inaccuracies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107554

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
amirmc 13y ago
It's evidently not 'expected' behaviour from the point of view of the user. Just because you happen to put an email address in the title of a calendar event doesn't imply that I expect the software to go and send messages on my behalf.
- ritikk4 13y ago
  Then we disagree. Especially if it's in the title it indicates you want to coordinate with the email you just entered. A proper way to do it is, Title: "Email Alice", Description: "alice@example.com".
  - ColinWright 13y ago
    When the user gets unexpected behaviour doing something that many believe to be reasonable, telling them they're doing it wrong is really bad user interaction. You can't change the behaviour of users, but you can make your software easier to use and more predictable in its behaviour.
  - Shooti 13y ago
    A good UI would make it explicitly clear by highlighting the email address and/or by auto adding an explicit entry to the guest list. At present there's no way to predict the behavior until after the fact. Something with that much consequence (sending an email to an unintended recipient) should never be done silently. By all means take the initiative with autofill etc, but the user should have the final say. If the supposed design revolution within Google (http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016268/google-the-redesign http://www.fastcodesign.com/3016268/google-the-redesign) isn't just for show, the Calendar team (assuming there even is an ongoing team) clearly hasn't been touched by it and that ought to be corrected.

perfunctory 13y ago

Should the word "unexpectedly" in the title be changed to "predictably"?

afhsfsfdsss88 13y ago
I was thinking 'naturally'.
- qwerty_asdf 13y ago
  Makes perfect sense!

aviraldg 13y ago

This is not a "private information leak." It's expected behaviour. Entering information in that field to create a new event results in Google Calendar parsing your information as best as it can, to automatically set things like the date, time, event description and of course, the participants (the apparent privacy leak here.)

Elessar 13y ago
If you're aware of the feature, it's not a privacy leak. If you aren't, it could be very damaging. It would have been nice if the first time the Calendar parsed and sent emails on behalf of a user, it would ask if this is what they wanted. It doesn't have to bug them ever again, but that's a single instance of training that would minimize confusion.
- aviraldg 13y ago
  https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604 https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604
  - Anderkent 13y ago
    Except that says: 'Who: This should begin with 'with' followed by a list of email addresses; these are added to the guest list.' 'Email alice@example.com' does not match this spec.
- kevinjohnson 13y ago
  Agreed. A simple confirmation popup is a quick fix which might prevent a lot of headaches.
edent 13y ago
Why then, does a notification dialogue box pop up when you enter the information on the calendar overview page? Evidently, someone thought it was a good idea to warn there that an invite was going to be sent. So why does no warning pop up when you're in the "Edit Event" view? There's a discrepancy here. See my video in the blog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqjYb6eiMWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqjYb6eiMWE

blueskin_ 13y ago

>Google really needs to work harder at protecting the privacy of its users. They would need to start protecting it first.

aniket_ray 13y ago
Google does work extremely hard trying to protect the privacy of its users. Yes, we might miss the boat sometimes but let's not make blanket statements like yours. D: I work for Google.
- UweSchmidt 13y ago
  Would you be so kind and provide your definition of "privacy"? The first thing that comes to mind is how much information about users Google itself stores and processes. This happened earlier and faster than people learned and understood the consequences of. The next thing would be how the real name policy can make it difficult to keep someones Youtube-habits separated from a gmail/g+ account. For you, do these two concerns fall under the term "privacy", or how do you reconcile all of that with your claim "protect the privacy of the users"?
  - aniket_ray 13y ago
    I am not looking for a debate here but your points are related to Google's algorithms analyzing user data. Google developers do not have access to that data and Google does not reveal data to anyone. Yes, I consider our handling of this data a success of our privacy engineers.
    - UweSchmidt 13y ago
      Thanks for the answer. I understand that times have changed and that revealing that you're from Google is not as fun as it used to be. The distinction you seem to be making between data that Google has and data that is "revealed to anyone" is misleading in my opinion. No matter who has the data, "privacy" is concerned. Also I need to call you out on your blanket statements that Google developers have no access to that data (clearly, some would, as part of their jobs, also [1]), and that data is not revealed to anyone (seriously?). As of January 2014, this position is not defensible and you might have to face a more nuanced, and possibly inconvenient reality. http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...

leephillips 13y ago

This article has pretty much the same content as my article from March, 2010: http://lee-phillips.org/gcaldisaster/ http://lee-phillips.org/gcaldisaster/ Even the titles are similar: this one's called "Another Google Privacy Flaw"; mine was called "Another Google Privacy Disaster Brewing". So people have been complaining about this since at least 2010, and Google by now has pretty firmly established that they don't care.

edent 13y ago
Hi Lee, Although I did search for information about this issue, I didn't come across your blog. I'll update mine with a link to yours. T
- leephillips 13y ago
  No worries - I didn't mean to imply that you copied me, but just to point out persistent this problem has been, and to underline the fact that Google doesn't consider it an issue.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

edent 13y ago
The recipient's calendar. So, let's say example.org run an Exchange server. I create a reminder saying "Tell phil@example.org he's a jerk". Phil will now see that in his Outlook calendar.
- username223 13y ago
  Right. So you write "Tell Phil at example dot org he's a jerk," or "Tell phil, example, org he's a jerk," or something else that makes sense to humans but not machines.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    That's terrible UX though. The point of using a computer is to make things easier - at least on the first try the program needs to ask you if you wish to enable automated invites (it could offer the option to "enable automated invites for only this address" too).
    - username223 13y ago
      Indeed it's awful. I just thought it was ironic that email obfuscation, a tactic used against malicious address-harvesting programs, would also be useful against "helpful" obnoxiousness.

username223 13y ago

Spammers gonna spam. Those around in the 90s should remember the usual email address obfuscation techniques.

brudgers 13y ago

Privacy, where it exists, creates impedance in Google's cash flow because it requires designing for some n sigma tail where n does not entail statistical significance and the case analysis must be very fine grained. Google doesn't have a category labeled "private" information". It never has and creating one is not planned. Privacy is not amenable to computer science. It is a social concept not a technical one. The closest technical concern is security. It scales and so that is where Google devotes resources. As far as Google is concerned: All your bit are belong to us.

ritikk4 13y ago
Generally speaking you might be right, but I fail to see the profit motive behind this specific case. It's just a UX disagreement it seems.
- brudgers 13y ago
  This is simply one expression of the corporate protocols in which privacy does not exist. It's not a bug. It's not an honest mistake. It is an implementation detail of a higher level abstraction.
  - ritikk5 13y ago
    ... or it's just the statistical certainty of having a disagreement over a feature implementation in a multi-featured app which in turn is a part of larger app suite, which is a part of a even bigger software infrastructure.
  - Atroxide 13y ago
    Of Course this isn't a bug- It's a feature. the only problem is that there isn't a confirmation screen when it detects that you have put a person's email address in the incorrect spot. All that is needed is for a popup to ask "Would you like to send this event to email@example.com?".
Pxtl 13y ago
Yes, but how does this particular privacy leak benefit Google? Google wants to have all your information themselves. Why would they want to give that info to your boss? This sounds like somebody being really clever and whipping up a fancy feature, but forgetting to finish it with proper meeting requests and a freaking confirmation box and whatnot. The idea itself is good - check for email addresses in meeting information and tying those to a Google account as invites. The problem is that the user isn't asked.

pgl 13y ago

One annoying thing about this is that it allows spammers to automatically add events to your calendar.

ZoFreX 13y ago
So THAT'S how they've been doing it. For the past week I've been inundated with spam events on my Google Calendar, it's been winding me right up.
- gms7777 13y ago
  Theres an option in your settings for google calendar that is something along the lines of "Automatically add invitations to Calendar" that you can turn off, and I think it will fix that problem for you.

raverbashing 13y ago

So the way to solve this is to create a note on my calendar with "Remind to complain about this to vic.gundotra@google.com larry.page@google.com" ?

master-ruse-man 13y ago
What about we flood their calendar about this? ;)
- frandroid 13y ago
  http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/012/132/thatsthejoke.jpg http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/012/132/tha...
- diminoten 13y ago
  Pretty sure this is illegal. :(
- deveshparekh 13y ago
  Just in case anybody took parent seriously, you shouldn't do this for the same reason you shouldn't flood their email inboxes about this. They will just mark your calendar invitation as spam.
r0h1n 13y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if there are hardcoded rules that guard senior Google execs against such inadvertent (or by design, take your pick) communications from hoi polloi that uses their products.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  I'm skeptical A whitelist wouldn't work, because these people need to be contacted from the outside, from people with gmail addresses (usually goes through a secretary though) A dedicated (unfiltered) internal email sounds more likely, or just routing directly google.com to google.com addresses. But then again this is google and maybe internally it's only Hangouts

ddalex 13y ago

A good friend told me once: " the moment you enter info in an electronic device, you can assume it's public ". It was in response to me getting a pic of him wearing red thongs (dont' ask), but the point stands in regards to Google, any email account, your PC, your phone, and everything else.

zorked 13y ago
I worry about an overly defeatist point of view here. Just because the security situation is so bad right now does not mean that it is unavoidably so.
DanBC 13y ago
That is good advice. Let's see a change to all the peivacy policies so it is made clearer. "Anything you enter might be leaked. We might not warn you before we leak your information. We have complex confusing interactions between your accounts on all our services, and we hide the settings pages, but if any information is lealed then LOL that's your fault". I kind of feel sorry for Google here - it's the 21st centuary and people are still persecuted for their sex or sexual preference. Part of the outrage is misplaced here - why the hell should she feel the need to hide such a fundamental aspect of herself from her colleagues? But then again, who cares what the reason was? She wasn't trolling or abusive or trying to male the Internet a worse place, so let her use whatever name she wants and stop linking everything together. There are much better ways of doing unified accounts that the mess that Google has given us.

jbb555 13y ago

I'm gradually stopping using all of google's services. One by one they either turn out to have "features" like this, or they "improve" them into being horrible. There isn't much left I use any more. And I used to like google a lot... Times change

xenophanes 13y ago

does it really count as unexpected at this point?

djim 13y ago

this is a feature. it's actually pretty awesome for setting up quick meetings. It's a function of the "Quick add" feature that carries over into the title of the event: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604?hl=en https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604?hl=en Edit: I am very familiar with Google's products, having helped many businesses move to Google Apps through the years. "Features" like this often surprise users and it is not unusual to get negative reactions. Normally, once you show someone how it works and explain that it isn't likely to change, they adapt.

bentcorner 13y ago
Ugh, I understand that it can be useful for some people, but I find natural language parsing of calendar events intrusive and annoying. 99% of the time it ends up parsing a field incorrectly, and if I wanted to set a field it's on the form anyway, so why bother? In this case, why parse out an email address and send them an invite when there's an "invite" text box on the same page? If the only way to set the time, date and invite list was to have the subject line get parsed, it would be obvious that this sort of thing will occur. Honestly, to me this is a solution in search of a problem.
- djim 13y ago
  but you can create an event from the calendar interface prior to going into the event interface. from the calendar interface, it only gives you the option of creating a title. so i can put meet with name@email.com and create the event. that's it. Google Calendar should TOTALLY notify you you are adding someone to the event and ask if you want to send an invite. Also, if you are in the events interface and add someone's email to the title, it should add that person to the guest list on the fly. It should do these things, but it doesn't. I think that is the root of the complaint, not the feature itself.
glennos 13y ago
My vote goes to 'feature' too. However, I didn't know about this behaviour, so perhaps Google should have a tooltip explaining what it parses.
13y ago

ujjwal_wadhawan 13y ago

Yes, It actually adds an invite in my other calender (other email account) without confirming. Surely a privacy issue.

Shank 13y ago

I'm going to take a stab here and say that "Automatically add invitations to my calendar" being set to yes is what allows you to be on the receiving end of this. Can someone try turning that setting off in the gear menu and repeating this? It would at least stop spammers (and people on HN from inviting execs to reminders about this).

PythonicAlpha 13y ago

That is one of the problems I see more and more often the last days: Applications try to be extra-clever (more clever than their users) and think 2 steps further ... thus doing more than the users said. So in my opinion, it is not only a privacy problem, but a problem of our "computing-" era. Applications get more and more clever, but in the effect they become extra-stupid, not doing what the user really wants, but doing what the programmer thought (or worse, some weird AI thought) could be right to do now. I think, the reason is, that somehow applications must more and more show that they are "better" than just simple eMail, or just simple groupware or just a simple (you name it), as it existed before and as thousands exists as open source apps. The way it goes, is adding some "extra benefit" (same as in the food area) to the applications. But sometimes the extra benefit plainly backfires. That's also the reason, I shiver when I think that the car industry wants cars that more and more take over control. That will become a big mess! I also will reduce my usage of Google products, because it becomes more and more "you have to do it the Google-way" products and I must say, that e.g. Gmail has worsen it's user experience over time ...

genwin 13y ago
> That's also the reason, I shiver when I think that the car industry wants cars that more and more take over control. That will become a big mess! It's only a matter of time before any traffic infraction anywhere results in an automatic debit from your bank account, and then Google lets everyone know, with a sad-face icon next to your name.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  Yes, and people that insist steering their car themselves will be punished by public opinion. They will be treated nearly the same way as Muslim looking people in US airports directly after 9/11.

jbsmith86 13y ago

when will it end?

aareet 13y ago

I discovered this by accident some time ago as well but I've always appreciated the convenience - when I add an event using the Quick Add dialog, it's very useful for me to be able to say "Movie Night with alice@example.com" and have it show up on Alice's calendar automatically. I use it all the time at work and at home and it saves me time from having to go to the dedicated event creation page to add people.

fastest963 13y ago
I don't think anyone is arguing the potential usefulness of the feature. It'd just be nice to know when its going to happen and have an alert box verifying that you actually wanted to add the user to the event. The alert box could even have an "Always do this" option.

cturhan 13y ago

My golden rule, never ever put any personal information on the web especially on google. If possible, don't even use your real name.

scott_karana 13y ago
Is your last name Turhan, by any chance? ;) (If you were being sarcastic, I rescind my comment)

CreakyParrot 13y ago

In a big-picture sense, it's only unexpected if one doesn't realize that privacy is inherently in conflict with their business model.

polemic 13y ago

I've had bad experiences with this "feature" lately too - scammers can pop notifications into my phone simply by "inviting" me to events. I have no idea that anything is afoot until my phone pings me the notification.

stevep98 13y ago

This reminds me of the interesting security implementation in Netscape Calendar. Among the interesting security practices: - the server sends the (obscured) password to the client, so the client can check it - if you want to look at another person's calendar, the server will send you the person's entire calendar, with the 'public/private' flag of each entry. It's up to the client to decide whether to show the user each entry. - If you click on another person's private entry, the calendar data was copied to the clipboard. Paste it somewhere to view the details.

petrel 13y ago

If this was any other company like Microsoft, Every one will enjoy.

edent 13y ago

A quick note to say I've received an email from Google - the calendar team are treating this as a bug and are implementing a fix. Hopefully it should make it a lot more obvious to users when a meeting invitation is about to be sent.