ResourceBlog Article: Moveon.org subscribers exposed or What About Yahoo?

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Saturday, 21st August 2004

Moveon.org subscribers exposed or What About Yahoo?

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Source: News.com
Moveon.org subscribers exposed: Is it Only Google?
This article discusses how Googlebot crawled personal info of some Moveon.Org members. According to the article a Moveon.org server misconfiguration caused the problem and it has been fixed. We've said before the issue of keeping material out of commercial web engines is primarily an issue for the webmaster/site owner. However, I don't understand why Google is the only engine mentioned in the article since it's not just a Google issue. Yes, they're the number one engine BUT other crawlers can access the same data and often do. For example, I ran a couple of searches with Yahoo and turned up the same info described in the article. The article doesn't mention that the data might be accessible elsewhere. Here's a Yahoo search I tried. You'll find some of the material mentioned in the article beginning at result #5 and clicking some of these links and other versions of these pages might return even more personal info. Focusing only on Google is not only unfair but it can give webmasters a false sense of reality. Other engines and databases exist. Someone looking for this content would likely have the skills to find it elsewhere. Actually, this is not a Google or Yahoo or any other web engine problem. In other words it's not their fault unless you just don't like the idea of web engines in the first place. Webmasters and content owners need to be aware of the fact that many web crawlers are out there and having the skills to keep content out of these databases (if they don't want it there) rests on their shoulders.
See Also: Inspired by Our Post and Comments (THANKS!) Eric Baillargeon offers his thoughts and a few screen captures.

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