by C. Hatton Humphrey
The desktop searcher is a new type of application that allows you to search your hard drive just like you search the Internet. The Google Desktop Search (offered by Google.com) is one of the few new tools that will index the files on your hard drive and let you run a "plain English" search on the index it creates. While convenient, this has exposed some interesting quirks that may make desktop searcher fans want to run for cover. Desktop Searchers are built to peer into your hard drive and even your Internet browser's file cache, which can include pages that were originally encrypted containing confidential information, such as account numbers, passwords and financial statements. Google Desktop Finds Holes (eWeek, November 29, 2004)