New Google tool is also the perfect spy program
New York: Google Desktop Search, publicly released in a "beta" test phase for computers running the latest Windows operating systems, automatically records e-mail you read through Outlook, Outlook Express or the Internet Explorer browser.

It also saves copies of Web pages you view through IE and chat conversations using America Online Inc.'s instant-messaging software. And it finds Word, Excel and PowerPoint files stored on the computer.

If you're the computer's only user, the software is helpful "as a photographic memory of everything you've seen on the computer," according to google officials. The giant index remains on the computer and isn't shared with Google. The company can't access it remotely.

"It's clearly a very powerful tool for locating information on the computer," said Richard M Smith, a privacy and security consultant in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "On the flip side of things, it's a perfect spy programme."

If it's installed on computers at libraries and Internet cafes, users could unwittingly allow people who follow them on the PCs, for example, to see sensitive information in e-mails they've exchanged.

That could also mean revealed passwords, and net based conversations along with viewed web pages detailing online purchases.
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