Highly usable software, such as Google Desktop, can seem revolutionary, but the web-meets-desktop search capabilities are seductively porous and raise huge privacy concerns. Documented flaws demonstrate how attackers can use the tool to access private information on the user's desktop. Worse yet, consider that Google Desktop keeps a sizable index and cache of historical data that by default is unencrypted: It retains previous versions of files, web-based email communications, browsing history, etc. and is largely invulnerable to overwriting and other deletion tools.

