Recover Lost Documents

Google’s Gmail e-mail service is testing a feature that will allow users to recall e-mails they have been sent by mistake. Gmail’s feature can retrieve messages before they are delivered and is being introduced to users worldwide.

Daniel Ionescu stated in his article for PC World that Gmail’s new “Undo Send” feature lets a user abort the delivery of any Gmail message within moments of sending it. Gmail’s new feature can be activated from the Settings/Labs tab in Gmail.

Once the feature is activated, a new “Undo” link will appear beside every sent e-mail confirmation. If “Undo” is clicked, it will take the user back to the composing window and confirm the retrieval of the e-mail. The feature, however, only holds e-mails in a queue for five seconds, giving the user time to think about it, but only for five seconds.

Previous Labs features on Gmail that allow users to not send a message include the Forgotten Attachment Detector, which will notice the lack of an attachment if it is mentioned in the body copy, and Mail Googles, which asks the user to answer a few math questions before sending out an e-mail.

Document-sharing Web site Scribd removed a list of 700 Comcast customers’ usernames and passwords on March 16, two months after it was posted there.

Elinor Mills reported in her article for CNET News that Scribd removed the list after Brad Stone of The New York Times contacted them about what appeared to be a list of thousands of passwords and usernames on the site. Stone stated that he was contacted by a customer of Comcast who came across the list during a search of his own e-mail address on the Pipl search engine.

Jennifer Khoury, a Comcast spokeswoman, told The New York Times that the list was likely compiled from phishing or another related form of attack and did not originate from within Comcast.

Khoury stated that the company has contacted the customers whose data was exposed and that their e-mail accounts have been frozen.

A Comcast spokesman later stated that they removed the list on Scribd, which consisted of 8,000 names, but only about 700 were usernames of Comcast customers. The spokesman stated that the other names on the list were either not customers, duplicates, or older inactive accounts with no current e-mail addresses.

The Arizona Department of Transportation successfully returned about 400 old family photo slides to the owner who had lost them alongside Interstate 17 a year and a half ago.

Cindy Barks reported in her article for the Daily Courier that, in 2007, Keith Massey was moving his father’s belongings from Sedona to West Hills, Calif. On his trip, undetected by Massey, one of the boxes containing his father’s belongings had fallen out of his truck on I-17 somewhere between Bumblebee and Black Canyon City.

Massey did not think to check with the ADOT about the lost belongings. If he had, he would have learned that two maintenance workers had discovered the slides scattered over about 200 yards on both sides of the interstate. The workers brought the photos back to the maintenance yard in Cordes Junction.

The photos lay forgotten for about a year, until ADOT training specialist Cheryl Williams discovered them in late 2008. Eventually, Williams was determined to return the photos back to their rightful owner.

Williams tried for months to find the family by writing to about 20 people with last names similar to those she found on notes that accompanied the slides. Williams and other ADOT officials eventually decided to contact the media for greater exposure to the lost photos.

Glenda Magsam of Prescott Valley went on a mission herself when she read an article in the Daily Courier on the photos on Feb. 12.

Nothing that “Massey” was among the names on the pages, Magsam got on the Internet and focused her search on obituaries.

Magsam found the obituary of Eric Massey, and saw that Keith Massey was one of his survivors. Magsam got Massey’s phone number and called him about the photos.

The lost slides were the only photos Massey had of his earlier years with his parents and sister. The photos consisted of pictures of his father Eric, his mother Rose Gale, and his sister Debbie, all of whom had passed away within the past four years.

Digital files showing an upgrade for one of President Barack Obama’s Marine helicopters were discovered on a file server in Iran late this past February.

Bob Brewin stated in his report for NextGov that Tiversa Inc., a company in Pennsylvania that scans file-sharing networks for government and corporate clients, first discovered the plans for the VH-60N Marine One presidential helicopter on peer-to-peer networks in late 2008.

Keith Tagliaferri, operations director at Tiversa, stated that the company informed the contractor that was the source of the security breach and notified the Defense Department that the files had been stolen. Tiversa discovered the same documents for Marine One on a file server in Tehran in late February and again informed the contractor as well as the Pentagon and the White House.

Brewin reported that, according to a video clip from a Fox news station in Pittsburgh, the files came from the VH-60N cockpit upgrade program, a contract that the Naval Air System Command awarded to Rockwell Collins in March of 2004.

Lt. Clay Doss, a Navy spokesman, stated that they are looking into the matter but did not have additional details to discuss.

The Fox news station reported that the VH-60N files included information on the helicopter’s missile warning and missile countermeasure systems. The documents were stolen because an employee may have downloaded a peer-to-peer program onto his or her computer, which also contained the Marine One file documents. As a result, all of the files on the computer were exposed to anyone on the file-sharing network.

Rockwell Collins, based in Cedar Falls, Iowa, is looking into the data leak of the VH-60N, but declined to provide details, stated Pam Tvrdy, a Rockwell spokeswoman.

Tagliaferri stated that they look at 100,000 files a day, and that the company regularly finds documents more sensitive than the blueprints for the upgrade to Marine One.