Google Desktop Tracked: The Aftermath

Don't be evil.
 - Google
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
 - Unknown

5. 'Be never gone.'

Get It Try It

So you decide you really don't like Sergey Brin and Larry Page sitting in your living room after all? You don't really like the prospect of them listening in on your life far more effectively than any Russian mafia keystroke logger?

You're gonna uninstall?

Good luck, dude. If you check this page you'll see how much junk they leave behind. And you don't know - no one knows - if it's just an aggravation or a threat or both.

After your 'uninstall' you've still got megabloats of Google crap hiding on your computer. There are secret files you won't be able to find and only with a lot of wherewithal be able to get at and eradicate.

Or how about this file?

/private/var/root/Library/Preferences/com.google.Desktop.QSB.plist

You can't get at that. They could because you gave them your password. But they didn't tell you what they'd be doing with that password and they didn't clean up after themselves when you trusted them to do so - and if it weren't for Tracker you wouldn't know.

You can't get into /private/var/root/Library/Preferences; you can't get into /private/var/root/Library; you can't even get into /private/var/root! That's root's directory - not yours!

You'd have to drill way down deep there - but more importantly: you'd have to know something is there.

And without this site and the software in use at this site - or unless you're prepared to sacrifice a guinea pig machine like the amusing DF - you'd have no chance of knowing.

And that's only the start of it. Your /Library/Receipts is full of junk - they've just deleted their software and they leave all that stuff behind? Including modules going by suspicious names like 'GDMDImportSpyLib'?

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

⇐ Look What They Did to Your Computer