Google Blog Alerts can defeat Live Journal’s privacy settings?

Today I was reviewing my Google Blog Alerts and spotted a posting that surprised me. I was surprised because the post obviously may have an impact on the person who posted it because it contains some sensitive information that could have negative ramifications if it were made public.

I was curious, so I clicked to visit the Live Journal page that Google had obviously crawled. I logged in using my OpenId, but was stopped from viewing the post via Live Journals privacy settings on the post.

Now I’m wondering how Google was able to see the post, why they would crawl private posts at all and how this might impact users if it were made public. So I’m making it public. What do you think of this revelation?

Filed under Google, OpenID | Comments (7)