Holiday PSA: Googlers, get a privacy screen for your laptops

If you're one of the millions of Americans flying (or, rather, attempting to fly) this holiday season, don't be like the senior Googler who spent part of his or her cross-country flight reading confidential company e-mails about pay increases and Lucasfilm settlements on a giant laptop screen with a tech journalist looking over his or her shoulder.

I won't say who the Google employee was, but the journalist was me. The Googler (I'll just use the masculine pronoun for convenience's sake) was sitting with his seat back up, while his neighbor's seat was leaned all the way back. This left a huge gap in between the seats, so that merely by looking straight ahead and turning my eyes slightly to one side I could see almost all of his laptop screen.

Not being one to pry (this is a deficiency I have as a journalist), I felt dirty just looking at what was right in front of me, especially when it was marked in big, bold letters: "CONFIDENTIAL." But I was also thinking, "am I really seeing this? This person should know better. Do they really not have some kind of policy about this at Google?"

When I got back to San Francisco, I contacted Google PR to ask if they had any sort of policy about this. I got no response, so I'm assuming that they don't. In which case, they should get a policy, and quick.

This kind of incident, in which a tech journalist gets a great view of an insider's screen on a flight out of SFO, can't be all that rare given the demographics of the Bay Area. Fortunately for both Google and myself, I didn't see anything incredibly juicy, thereby saving me from any sort of internal struggle I might have over the idea of reporting information gotten in this manner.

The gift-giving part of this holiday season is over, but consider this little reminder about the virtues of good privacy practices as our gift to corporate types everywhere. Googlers in particular should take some of that pay increase that corporate e-mailed you about last week and buy a laptop privacy screen. Because the next time, it might not be a journalist reading those confidential emails—it might be far worse.

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