Google Docs Design Flaw May Fool You Into Making Your Docs Editable by Anyone

While I assume that the number of people using Google Docs in Almeria can probably be counted on one hand (prove me wrong people!), there’s an interesting article from wired.com on the security settings:

Wired.com has discovered a design flaw in the web app’s user interface that could lead users to mistakenly open up their docs to editing by anybody on the internet.

Funny thing is, we found out about it the hard way.

A co-worker of mine discovered Wednesday morning that the Wired Tech Layoff Tracker, a spreadsheet we’re sharing with all of you using Google’s free service, had been changed. The name of the reader who had edited the doc wasn’t known to my co-worker, and he certainly hadn’t knowingly given edit permissions to anyone outside Wired.com.

Thankfully, our hacker was a benevolent fellow who immediately notified us he had been able to edit our shared document. Thanks to him, we were able to correct the exploit before anyone else could fiddle with our spreadsheet.

Read the whole article here. Google Docs, for those of you who don’t know, is a free online document editing suite (similar to Microsoft Office) that allows users to share and write documents online.

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