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Updated: 08:46 AM EDT
Google Search Tool Has Privacy Risks
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP

NEW YORK (Oct. 19) - People who use public or workplace computers for e-mail, instant messaging and Web searching have a new privacy risk to worry about: Google's free new tool that indexes a PC's contents for quickly locating data.

If it's installed on computers at libraries and Internet cafes, users could unwittingly allow people who follow them on the PCs, for example, to see sensitive information in e-mails they've exchanged. That could mean revealed passwords, conversations with doctors, or viewed Web pages detailing online purchases.

''It's clearly a very powerful tool for locating information on the computer,'' said Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security consultant in Cambridge, Mass. ''On the flip side of things, it's a perfect spy program.''

Google Desktop Search, publicly released Thursday in a ''beta'' test phase for computers running the latest Windows operating systems, automatically records e-mail you read through Outlook, Outlook Express or the Internet Explorer browser. It also saves copies of Web pages you view through IE and chat conversations using America Online Inc.'s instant-messaging software. And it finds Word, Excel and PowerPoint files stored on the computer.

If you're the computer's only user, the software is helpful ''as a photographic memory of everything you've seen on the computer,'' said Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products at Google Inc.

The giant index remains on the computer and isn't shared with Google. The company can't access it remotely even if it gets a subpoena ordering it to do so, Mayer said.

Where the privacy and security concerns arise is when the computer is shared.

Type in ''hotmail.com'' and you'll get copies, or stored caches, of messages that previous users have seen. Enter an e-mail address and you can read all the messages sent to and from that address. Type ''password'' and get password reminders that were sent back via e-mail.

Acknowledging the concerns, Mayer said managers of shared computers should think twice about installing the software until Google develops advanced features like password protection and multi-user support.