If I Screw Up My Website, Can I Blame Google?

A School System, who failed to secure their own webserver are now suing Google for “electronic trespassing” for including the names and social security numbers of over 600 students in the Google Search Cache.

Somehow, lawyers in Winston Salem, NC were able to convince a judge to issue an injunction to get Google to purge their servers of the school system’s data.
I am a usual critic of Google and its business practices, but in this case, Google is innocent. I don’t buy the school system’s story that Google used a student’s hard-coded password to spider the school system’s site. That’s not the way the Google web crawlers and indexing engine works. It is far more likely that the page was improperly protected.

From the Winston-Salem Journal here:

HICKORY — Catawba County Schools took aim at Google Friday.

The system filed an injunction against the Internet search engine

The temporary injunction, granted by the Honorable Richard D. Boner, calls for Google to remove any information pertaining to Catawba County Schools Board of Education from its server and index and alleges conversion and trespass against the corporation.

In short, schools say Google grabbed information they shouldn t have.

Google says they are wrong.

Either way, the names, Social Security numbers and test scores of 619 students were still bouncing around the Web for people with computers to find and read until late Friday, when the page was apparently removed.

Catawba County Schools chief technology officer Judith Ray said her department removed the file from its storage server Friday. They are also working to delete any other electronic files that may contain Social Security numbers or other secure student information.

However, in a way, the School System has a very small legitimate beef. This complaint that Google has very little in the way of customer service and assistance may be true. After all, its not like Google posts its 800 number for customer service. But if the school really wanted to remove the content from Google, Google provides an easy and fast way to do it. You can see how here.

Shocker, though, the school officials, who are too stupid to secure their own data, and too quick to jump to conclusions and blame Google, are also too stupid to use Google to find out how to remove cached content!