Google Dashboard Makes Your Account LESS Secure

Every now and then I wonder just what and how much about me is floating around in “the cloud”. And then I stop thinking about it because I realize that it’s a question without an answer. Oh sure, I Google myself from time to time to see how “important” I am, but beyond that I just accept that the Internet is not really within my control.

So I was intrigued to hear that Google had released Dashboard, and was calling it a tool to help you keep track of what was “out there”.

Umm . . . wrong.

I’ve looked at Dashboard and checked out my account. And I like having all my “stuff” in one place. I even see that my address is wrong on one item, reflecting a home I moved out of several years ago.

It’s neat. But it’s just an aggregation of the services Google provides that I’ve attached to my Google account.

That’s it. Google Dashboard does NOT tell me “what they know about me”. It does NOT help manage my security settings. Reality: my user name and email address get me in, just as they always did. And everything is in one convenient place.

Which means that from a security standpoint, Google Dashboard is a huge step BACKWARD, as anyone who knows my name and password can now alter all my stuff from one, nice, convenient page!

What was Google thinking?