Wired - If you're currently sharing spreadsheets, documents or presentations using Google Docs, go double-check the permissions settings of those shared docs right now.
Wired.com has discovered a design flaw in the web app's user interface that could lead users to mistakenly open up their docs to editing by anybody on the internet.
Funny thing is, we found out about it the hard way.
A co-worker of mine discovered Wednesday morning that the Wired Tech Layoff Tracker, a spreadsheet we're sharing with all of you using Google's free service, had been changed. The name of the reader who had edited the doc wasn't known to my co-worker, and he certainly hadn't knowingly given edit permissions to anyone outside Wired.com.
Thankfully, our hacker was a benevolent fellow who immediately notified us he had been able to edit our shared document. Thanks to him, we were able to correct the exploit before anyone else could fiddle with our spreadsheet.
The problem stems from a confusing bit of interface design in Google Docs.
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