Web Accelerator Can Delete Your Account?

[Laurent Van Winckel]

Oh, tell me this isn't true. Jason Fried purports (see here: http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/g..._designers.php) that Google Web Accelerator is, because of prefetching, actually clicking on links like "Delete my account" or "Cancel" in webforms.

The accelerator scours a page and prefetches the content behind each link. This gives the illusion of pages loading faster (since they’ve already been pre-loaded behind the scenes). Here’s the problem: Google is essentially clicking every link on the page — including links like “delete this” or “cancel that.” And to make matters worse, Google ignores the Javascript confirmations. So, if you have a “Are you sure you want to delete this?” Javascript confirmation behind that “delete” link, Google ignores it and performs the action anyway.
This could easily be the most alarming accusation yet. I would hope it is not true. I would hope the Accelerator has a mechanism for preventing this. I would hope the Web Accelerator is not the reason I keep getting logged out of my accounts lately.

From: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/05/06...lerator_i.html

I'm beginning to think prefetching, while a lofty idea, just can't work in real life. There are far too many questions and problems. If Google has found solutions to these problems, well, good for them. I'd be quite proud to hear that they are smart enough to have already thought of these issues and solved them. The problem is, since Google is so quiet and secretive, we have absolutely no idea if that is the case.

I think its time we finally got a statement from Google. The accusations are flying left and right, and Google needs to put this to rest. No more sitting in an ivory tower in Mountain View. If Web Accelerator is safe, Google should say so. If not, disable the GWA servers until the product is more robust. Being silent is no longer an option.

[Arisna]

I guess that's why this product is still in beta. I participate in most Google Labs projects, but I'm sitting this one out due to privacy/security concerns.