This story states that several students social security numbers were available online, and the school is blaming Google.

Apparently they are claming Google indexed a site that reqiured a username & password. Google says, however, that it cannot index anything password protected.

I, for one, believe Google here, as what most likely occured here was solely the fault of the school. Not only could they fully block Google from indexing the site by PROPERLY password protecting the files in question, but they can also block Google by using what as known as a robots.txt file. Essentially either of thoes two means would have made it impossible for Google to index the information in quesion.

My best guess is that Google's spider followed a link that, if anybody else were to follow, would allow anybody to see the supposedly secure information. So all Google did was expose what was happening here. Most likely if Google hadn't found it, other individuals could and probably would (assuming they hadn't already) have found it themselves. The site would be a secret treasure trove for people who commit identity theft... The question becomes how long has this information been exposed?