According to the complaint, the Web search giant does not “adequately safeguard the confidential information that it obtains." The complaint underlines the privacy and security risks regarding services such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Desktop, Picasa Web Albums and Google Calendar.

 

The privacy group wants the FTC to determine if Google is properly safeguarding the privacy of users and if it has been involved in deceptive trade practices. EPIC said it is mostly concerned about the fact that Google may not encrypt the data held on its servers.

 

EPIC said in the complaint that although Google promises its users that the documents stored on Google servers are secure, the service terms are a bit out of line. If the FTC finds out that Google does not adequately safeguard the information of its clients, EPIC said that the Web search company should be stopped from providing cloud computing services until the problem is resolved and security is established. 

 

Google received a copy of EPIC’s complaint. “We are highly aware of how important our users' data is to them and take our responsibility very seriously," a company spokesman said. 

 

The complaint stresses that Google’s security faulty practices have cause a series of data breaches. The latest of them occurred on March 7, 2009 when some people who uploaded their documents on Google Docs found out that those docs had been shared with some unauthorized users. Ouch Google! 

 

The Web search giant said that a bug was responsible for mistakenly sharing the documents. Approximately 0.05 percent of all documents were affected by the bug according to Google.