Writely: A great product with questionable security
For those of you not familiar with Writely, it’s an online beta word processing service that provides the following services:
Create documents online
Upload documents from Word
Publish to the web
Post to your blog
Participate in online collaboration with people you specify
Yes, it’s a great product with fantastic potential. And now that Google has purchased the company, Upstartle, things could get very interesting. There is just one catch; there are no safeguards to protect the content of documents during editing or viewing.
On February 27, 2006, in the Writely blog, Jen, an employee of Upstartle, responded to a thread in which users questioned why SSL protection was not provided.
[QUOTE=Jen]OK, now I have to reply ;-}
We don’t have SSL definitively planned as part of a premium service, although that’s certainly possible. SSL will definitely slow the service down, which is why we would likely not make it the default in the basic service. Yes, I know this response is vague, but it’s only because our plans are not final![/QUOTE]
As I posted to the Writely blog, it’s irresponsible for an organization to provide a tool like this without any apparent regard for safeguarding the activities of its users. I hope that Google takes a different approach with this innovative and, in my opinion, much needed service.
This entry was posted
on Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 4:38 pm and is filed under All, Commentary, Reviews.
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You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Writely: A great product with questionable security
For those of you not familiar with Writely, it’s an online beta word processing service that provides the following services:
Yes, it’s a great product with fantastic potential. And now that Google has purchased the company, Upstartle, things could get very interesting. There is just one catch; there are no safeguards to protect the content of documents during editing or viewing.
On February 27, 2006, in the Writely blog, Jen, an employee of Upstartle, responded to a thread in which users questioned why SSL protection was not provided.
[QUOTE=Jen]OK, now I have to reply ;-}
We don’t have SSL definitively planned as part of a premium service, although that’s certainly possible. SSL will definitely slow the service down, which is why we would likely not make it the default in the basic service. Yes, I know this response is vague, but it’s only because our plans are not final![/QUOTE]
As I posted to the Writely blog, it’s irresponsible for an organization to provide a tool like this without any apparent regard for safeguarding the activities of its users. I hope that Google takes a different approach with this innovative and, in my opinion, much needed service.
Author: Tom Olzak
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This entry was posted on Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 4:38 pm and is filed under All, Commentary, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.