Dangerous Search
The internet search has given us a tremendous benefit - the ability to quickly find the information we need. If in the early days of the internet we rummaged through directories looking for interesting sites, asking for advice from more experienced internet users, now it is enough to just formulate a query in a search engine, whether it be Google or Yandex.
Search is not only about search engines; we look for information about people on social networks, search for videos on YouTube, and find reference information on Wikipedia. All of this is very convenient and very dangerous.
In this chapter, I will not talk about how Google strives to know everything about you, collects and stores information about you, or how search results may retain information about you that you would like to delete. We will discuss these issues in the relevant chapters of the course, and in this chapter, I will talk about another danger posed by search engines.
SMS Message Leakage
Many of you have used the ability to send free SMS from the operator's website or have heard about it; this service is popular in some countries, such as Russia. When sending messages, you probably do not assume that they will be accessible to anyone who wishes.
Users of the MegaFon website did not assume this either when sending free online SMS until one day they discovered them in the cache of the Yandex search engine. The Yandex cache retained the dates, texts, and recipient numbers of the SMS.
The reason for the problem lay in the sitemap of the MegaFon operator's website, where there was no prohibition on indexing pages with information about sent SMS, and in the tool "Yandex.Metrica." By design, the SMS page was known only to the sender; by following a unique link, they could see information about the sent SMS and its status, but in the end, they saw the entire internet, and network users took pleasure in quoting and discussing the most spicy SMS.
