Add Drawings to Google Docs – and Serious Security Holes Too!

Google is on a tear, announcing products in rapid-fire succession.

The latest is a simple editor for drawings that's been added to Google Docs.

You can now insert shapes, draw lines, insert scribbles and text, and change the color, line width and other formatting options.

The drawing is added as an image but you can still edit it after it's been added to your document. Google uses SVG in Firefox, Opera, Chrome and other browsers that support it and VML in Internet Explorer, so you won't need any third-party plug-ins.

See below, though, to learn about the potential security risks associated with this feature.

insert drawing Add Drawings to Google Docs and Serious Security Holes Too!

In other news, Google also created a BlackBerry version of its voice search feature that was previously only available for Apple's iPhone.

In yet more news, there may be a couple of serious security issues associated with Google Docs (as if accidentally sharing your files wasn't enough).

There have been three issues that have been discovered while looking into potential security lapses with the service.

First, when you embed a picture in a protected document it gets uploaded to a Google server where people to whom you haven't given access to the file can still see it (and even download it). This is still the case even after you’ve deleted the document.

Second, if you share a document with an image embedded, as described above, the person with whom you've shared it will be able to view ANY version of ANY diagram that's been included in the document. So, in a nutshell, if you embed an image with sensitive information and later decide to remove a piece of it BEFORE sharing the document in view-only mode, the person with whom you've shared it will still be able to revert to the older version simply by changing the URL, revealing that which you THOUGHT had been hidden from the user.

The third issue is so sensitive that the details of it have not yet been revealed, pending further investigation by Google. A security specialist claims that if you remove another person's permission to access your documents, they may still be able to access them later without your knowledge.

That may be the nail in the coffin. Hopefully, Google gets on this quickly and addresses these concerns in a timely and responsible manner.