I am an obsessive Google user. But I am not as crazy about probably the best search engine on the Internet as the Googlewhackers, who have a strange game using the search engine.

You type any combination of two words into the Google search engine until you get one, and only one, result. You're a googlewhacker.

Combinations such as friable strawberry, Buddhist fossil, flexible granite are already gone. Get it? Me, I'd rather eat jam than get into a coma about word combinations (I did try).

Still, googlewhacking is an indication of just how much the Internet inspires mass behaviour. There are entire sites devoted to this fad (www.googlewhack.com for example).

Google is good. It's easy to use, fast and has an uncanny ability to put the results I want at the top of a search list. Google also has a good translation engine.

You can plug the Internet address of almost any page into the search engine and get a reasonable approximation of what a news article is reporting for example. It has separate search services for images, groups and news.

Now it's bringing out an e-mail service in a bid to beat Yahoo!, Microsoft and other portal sites based on providing e-mail and search services.

A preview of Google's Gmail came online this week, with the offer of one gigabyte (1,000 megabytes) of space for power e-mailers, enough for 500,000 pages of e-mail according to the company.

Gmail is built on the idea that users should never have to file or delete a message and due to an in-built search engine allows you to find an e-mail that has been sent or received.

But while all of this is free, beware of the small print, according to Privacy International, says Gmail violates European privacy laws because Google plans to store messages on its system long after users have deleted them from their mailbox.

The group also complains about Google's plan to scan users' e-mail so as to paste relevant advertising into the messages.

Well if that claim is true, I won't be using Google for my e-mail.

It will be the first mis-step by the search engine. Google says in defence: "No humans read your e-mail to target the ads, and no e-mail content or other personally identifiable information is ever provided to advertisers."

To check out Gmail, visit http://gmail.google.com.

As the person in charge of IT administration at your company are you sure you've set the right computer access policies for desktop users?

Many organisations wrongly grant "Power User" or "Administrator" rights to Windows desktop users.

Granting users extended rights on the desktop will increase support costs by ten percent or more and create significant security risks, according to research by Forrester Research.

Administrative rights give users full access to install software and change system settings. The Power User setting allows users to install most software, change settings and modify account settings.

Since some applications or functions only work if users have elevated rights, IT managers often tend to make exceptions rather than enforce policies. The research found that only about 30 percent to 40 percent of companies have managed desktop polices where user rights are very limited.

The majority of companies have opened themselves up to security risks by not having an access policy or by making exceptions for a half or more of their employees.

Organisations in regulated industries like banking, telecom, insurance and healthcare tend to be more rigid about access policies than other sectors. For example in a case study Marathon Oil noted that in 2003, it had successfully locked down ten percent of its desktops. The other ten percent of the users had retained administrative rights.

The cost was that these users accounted for half of the help desk call volume. What are the risks? Software that is installed by an individual user may cause problems with the network (as happened at The Royal Gazette eons ago when one bored sub-editor brought in a game, put it into the computer and saw the entire system go down as deadline loomed).

File sharing programs, instant messaging software and a variety of other software can become a means for viruses or malicious code to enter the network.

So what are the best policies for a business to follow according to the research? First try to achieve a target of limiting the access rights of ninety percent or more of users of the network.

They should only have the most basic access, rather than Power User or Administrator rights. Using the "Active Directory" or other administrative tools, IT should also lock down browser security settings and if desired, the desktop background, home page, and other settings, according to Forrester.

People who should be elevate to administrative rights should include desktop support technicians, senior desktop IT support managers and users when required or otherwise appropriate.

Administrative rights should even be limited among IT personnel and should not be able to share accounts. Using a shared account limits the ability to keep a useful audit log if an IT person decides to use it for personal reasons.

Another good piece of advice is to never use the default "Administrator" account for any system. Forrester found that a majority of companies have not renamed the account.

Hackers or internal personnel who want to break in to the system will almost always target the default "Administrator" account.

Contact Ahmed at editor@offshoreon.com