Het Financieele Dagblad (“The Financial Journal”), 03-10-2011

Don’t throw confidential information out on the street

Those who use free translation tools are giving their consent to make company information available to the public

Pawel Walentynowicz

Information is an extremely valuable possession for most companies. Confidentiality agreements with partners and companies are intended to protect this precious commodity from the competition and hackers. But who gives much thought to the dangers that lurk within the company itself?

A free online translation tool almost sounds too good to be true. It is in fact a fantastic piece of technology that makes it possible to translate words, sentences, and even entire databases. The most commonly used tools are Yahoo Babel Fish, Microsoft’s Bing Translator and Google Translate, which boasts the possibility to translate 69 languages. Almost everyone knows that the quality of these translations is poor, but it does give them an instant idea about the content of a text, perfect for quickly grasping the overall gist of a document. Most users give little thought to how the ‘translation machine’ actually works; they’re just happy if it works.

But suppose, for example, that an account manager with clients around the globe receives a Japanese document and must understand the contents of the document for a conference call the very next morning. The internal translation department or an external translation agency needs more time for the translation than the account manager has. So, as he often does in this type of situation, he turns to Google Translate and, within seconds, believes he has solved his translation problem.

But what happens when you click on ‘translate’? Before so much as a word is translated, the user must agree to Google’s terms and conditions. Section 11 is particularly interesting. ‘By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content…” In other words, the account manager has not only violated the confidentiality agreement with the client, but may have also put more or less confidential information from his company out on the street for everyone to enjoy. How many employees naively use online translation tools on a regular basis and how much information is leaked out daily as a result? How often are international confidentiality agreements violated in this manner, simply because employees are not aware of the risks they are taking by using ‘free’ tools?

We don’t know what companies like Google or Microsoft do – or will do – with the information gathered, but we do know that Google is gradually building an information empire. It does this using YouTube (music and video preferences), Google search engine (individual preferences), Gmail and Google + (personal information on users), Google Maps (the entire world on film), Google Docs (information on large quantities of literature) and Google Translate, which collects enormous amounts of sensitive company information daily. We can only hope that, after WikiLeaks, the next leak isn’t a GoogleLeak, as that would mean an unfathomable amount of traceable company information available online.

Companies would therefore be well advised to sit down with their IT department and determine how often each day their employees visit free translation sites and to come up with an alternative.

Pawel Walentynowicz – the owner of the Transenter Translation Center

Het Financieele Dagblad (“The Financial Journal”) is a daily Dutch newspaper, founded over 200 years ago. It is focused on business and financial matters.

 

The Efficient and sustainable business through innovation and technology conference

The main goal of the project is to build a forum of business leaders that will take up topics concerning environmental care and innovation. The awareness of benefits one can get doing business in a socially responsible environment is also our aim.

We have invited speakers form leading companies on the Polish and World market, who will talk about efficiency, sustainability, social responsibility, technology and innovation in their companies and the business world. We have received the honorary patronage of:

• the Lower Silesian Employer Association
• the Lower Silesian Chamber of Commerce

which associate many leading companies on the polish market.

The Wrocław conference in September was the first one of the series we have planned. It was a part of the Eco-Efficient project Transenter has started to promote international efficiency, innovation, ecology and technology among business leaders on the polish market.

The conference was followed by a discussion allowing the company representatives to interact and interchange views on the topics discussed during the conference, as well as start cooperation to exchange knowledge and best practices or do business in a socially responsible environment.