Google Patches Serious Gmail Contacts Bug

Jan 2, 2007 at 9:27am ET by Barry Schwartz

Via Threadwatch, Engadget’s summary of a serious bug in Google’s Gmail, where web sites can retrieve your Gmail contact list, through a JavaScript loophole, has now been fixed. The bug allowed web sites to pull your Google contact list, if you were still logged into your Google account and had JavaScript enabled (which is most people who use Gmail). This comes hot off the news that Google accidentally deleted 60 email accounts messages.

Related Topics: Google: Gmail

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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http://www.topranksearch.com David

….how about Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail??? Have they dropped any?

GMail for me is way better (IMO) as it gives me less PrOn to delete everyday.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ Matt Cutts

David, you made me curious. I dug around for a few minutes and found this:
http://news.com.com/Hotmail+users+missing+old+email,+address+books/2100-1023_3-241926.html

“Some Microsoft Hotmail users unable to check their email since last week got an unwelcome surprise today when they finally gained access to their accounts. Although their new mail was intact, their personal folders, address book entries and saved mail had been deleted. ….

The company says the problem with one of Hotmail’s servers affects less than one-half of 1 percent of its 67 million users.”

Let’s see, 0.005*67M = 335,000 users, if my math is right. So I’d still feel relatively more safe with Gmail even despite this. I’m sure that the team is also looking at ways to try to keep even this much from happening again.
http://www.acclivitymarketing.com/blog Solomon Rothman Web Design Search Engine Marketing

There is a certain amount of risk with any web based mail, but in general the benefits almost always out weight the costs.