The Blog of Harald

In Wired News: Rooting Around Site With Intent?, Michelle Delio discusses a case in Sweden where a reporter downloaded Intentia‘s Q3 2002 financial statements before they were officially released. Intentia has filed a complaint against Reuters and the reporter in question, claiming they violated various intellectual property and computer protection laws.

Both Intentia and Reuters agree the Reuters reporter obtained Intentia’s financial statement directly from Intentia’s website.

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But since Intentia did not provide an explicit link to the report, Intentia’s lawyers consider Reuters’ retrieval and early publication of the information a violation of intellectual property and computer system protection laws.

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The reporter did not use software that would penetrate or search Intentia’s private systems. The reporter did not enter a password in order to obtain the data. The reporter simply went to the area of Intentia’s site where such information is normally posted and found the report.

This just proves once again that most people don’t understand security or the Internet. Placing confidential data on a public website is just asking for trouble. If you need to pre-publish data (e.g. to make sure it can be accessed from the outside before announcing it), put a password or other ACL on it!

These people need SelectAccess :-).