I heard about this problem with the Google Web Accelerator a little earlier today. What I ended up reading was nothing short of inexcusable. Google should really look at what it is releasing in the future.

Google has raised privacy and security hackles once again, this time by developing an application that accelerates Web surfing but can also delete pages or serve up password-protected content.

The complaints center on the search giant’s Web Accelerator, which was released on Wednesday. Downloadable software for broadband users, Web Accelerator is intended to speed access to Web pages by serving up cached or compressed copies of sites from Google’s servers.

Though the software can be useful to consumers who are in a hurry–broadband connections already deliver pages quickly–critics were quick to find a potentially damaging glitch. A flaw with Web Accelerator, which Google acknowledges, can serve cached copies of private discussion groups or password-protected pages to people using the software. [Read the rest]