“Consumers Should Not Use New Google Desktop”, warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

A new feature on Google’s new desktop version, called Search Across Computer “greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy”, according to the EFF, a non-profit organisation that aims to protect civil liberties in the networked world.

The new tool will store copies of the user’s Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google’s own servers for up to 30 days, to enable searching from any one of the user’s computers.

EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password.