http://www.google.com/search?q=site:apple.com+index+of&hl=en&safe=off&start=0&sa=N

Type the following into the Google search field:

site:apple.com index of

look at the results. cool

I actually DID have something taken from my car before. That’s something entirely different because well- I don’t have that thing anymore- It was TAKEN.

If someone looks at a file, the owner would still have it. The more accurate parallel would be that if you leave your living room drapes WIDE OPEN (which a lot of people actually do) and someone driving past in a car on the street takes a brief look out of idle curiosity (hey, to see what the house owners are watching on TV… since the drapes are WIDE OPEN)

Even if this touches a gray area I think people are making it a bigger deal then it is. For example, would ANYONE leave their bank records in their own websites, even if they did bother put in an index.htm?

Alternatively, Apache’s config allows you to forbid directory scans.

But this article should have been more like “how to protect your website directories by not being stupid and making an index file” ,or something like that.

And to all the other “commenters” : Its not that big of an issue, and I think most of MUO readers are smart and sensible enough to not use this trick to breach others’ privacy just for fun.

And unless this article reaches digg ( which seems very unlikely ), it is virtually harmless.

It is true that people have open directories they are unaware of, but just because you choose to peruse through them doesn’t make you a “hacker” or a criminal or put your moral integrity into question. There are many valid reasons for having open directories and for letting Google index them.

If anything, this article should help make people aware of such things, and that they need to close their directories if they don’t want their data to be discovered through such means. The bad guys are out there, and they *will* be looking through your open directories, so if you are so concerned about this, close them up!

Why are people not upset at Google for making this all possible in the first place? (Not that I think they should be…they should be aiming their displeasure at people who don’t know how to secure their web sites/servers).

Look, it’s an interesting article/read for those who don’t know how in-depth a search engine Google is, but the way the article was written felt more like a ‘rummaging files for dummies’ than the normal insightful reads this site usually had. You had a good idea, but the presentation was off.

You probably would have been better off touting the value of securing all types of files when creating websites and presenting this as a way of showing how these files can be accessed without the proper passwords or protocols when there’s no security in place. Cite how to secure said files, or at least allude that there’ll be another article to address it, and then MAYBE you wouldn’t have had the blowup in dismayed comments like you did.

Besides that, the majority of them don’t understand how the net works and think it is just a series of tubes.

Just drop an blank index.html or index.htm file in the directory. Problem solved. Get a life, whiners.

Please be responsible, censor yourself, and remove this post. Don’t turn makeuseof.com into another one of “those” sites.

So Mark, next time you leave your car door unlocked remember everything inside is fair game for whoever walks by and looks in the window

Some of you might say what right do we have to go browsing through people’s website folders? But look at it this way – these people posted this stuff online – in an unprotected unsecure website folder. It’s as if they are asking for it to be found. They are making no effort to keep it hidden or secure and putting it out on the World Wide Web is the most stupidest thing in the world to do if you want to keep something private and hidden.

Whatever helps you justify your actions eh? I must say makeuseof has been going downhill lately and this just shows it.