A sweep of a free online translation tool’s memory has exposed a major danger for businesses and individuals.
The storing of data online poses a major risk to security and privacy as potentially sensitive documents are available online, available for all to find, if they know how.
“When we sat down and googled we just thought: ‘Wow! What is this?’ This was information from organizations, private companies, government agencies. We found notices of dismissal, plans of workforce reductions and outsourcing, passwords, code information and contracts,” says Lise Lyngsnes Randeberg, president of Tekna (The Norwegian Society of Graduate Technical and Scientific Professionals) in an interview where she explains how they came across the documents having conducted Google searches connected to the web site Translate.com.
Many will not know how translation tools work. You upload a file or text, they translate text, then store both source and target files (or languages) in the cloud – this then potentially is accessible for everyone online, if that is, the right security measures are not in place.
Only last week employees in Statoil, the Norwegian oil company, discovered that text that had been typed in on the translation web site could be found by anyone conducting a search. They have of course had to contact translate.com to get the data deleted.
So what did translate.com have to say? Norwegian News Agency, NRK contacted translate.com to find out.
Translate.com explained that they are open and transparent about the fact that texts are used and stored by the company as part of the overall translation memory quality process.
The company now offers users the opportunity to contact them to have documents/text removed. According to NRK, even though Statoil were told their documents were removed, after a quick search they managed to find the files again and restore them.
This is a clear word of warning for anyone using free translation tools online – your information can become public.
According to Randeberg the discovery illustrates how most companies and organizations have not read the terms and conditions for use of popular translation web sites well enough.
“If your boss recommends that you use a service, you must be able to trust it. This shows that there is a desperate need for upgrading IT security expertise both at the top, and down to the individual employee.”
Or you could use a translation company who assures security and privacy for all your files and documents….
