It was reported in Computerworld that Google apologized after it
mistakenly e-mailed potentially sensitive business data last week to other users
of its business listings service.


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longDesc="Security Manual Template - Sarbanes-Oxley">The company’s Local
Business Center allows businesses to create a listing for Google’s search engine
and Maps application, as well as add videos, coupons or photos.


Google then provides data on how customers found the listing, showing search
terms people used before clicking the listing and other data such as the
geographic location of someone who looked up driving directions to the
business.


Google will send reports to those who are signed up. Early last week, Google
sent the reports to third parties by mistake. The mistake affected several
thousands businesses registered with Local Business Center, of which there are
more than a million.


“Shortly after sending the newsletter to a portion of our users last night,
we discovered that some e-mails included statistics for the wrong business,”
Google said in a written statement. “We promptly stopped sending any further
e-mails and investigated the cause, which we found to be a human error while
pulling together the newsletter content. We’d like to apologize to all the
business owners impacted and assure them that we’re fixing the process that led
to this mistake.”


People who received the data then began to publicize the incident, realizing
the privacy implications. Chicago-based Internet consultant David Dalka wrote on
his blog that he received information regarding the listing for Boscos, a
restaurant in Tennessee that brews its own beer.

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