Short summary. Can we block Google searches through our hosted source code, while retaining the ability for anyone to check out or browse that source code.
The long story. Our hosted project is a 100% open source project that parses information from text pages sent from 911 dispatch centers to emergency responders. The parsing code itself is completely innocuous. But the comments and test cases contain thousands of verbatim examples of these 911 dispatch pages. Which contain real patient addresses and call descriptions, and occasionally real names and phone numbers. From a strictly legal point of view, we are on safe ground. The HIPPA rules barring release of personal medical information contain specific exemptions covering dispatch communications. But we are unhappy with the situation that allows anyone doing a Google search for a specific address to find occasional examples of 911 calls to that address in our code base. Obfuscating the call description and address information would defeat the purpose of the test classes, which are often keyed to specific call description text, and need to confirm that the final address can be located in Google map search. Obfuscating the name and phone number information is doable. It would be a lot of work, but it can be done. The only reason I haven't gone ahead and done that is that removing it from our current source code doesn't really help. It would remain in previous versions of those sources, which are readily available in the source code browser. And show up in Google search results :( So, we are really hoping we can just block Google searches through that code base. If we owned the site, a simple entry in robots.txt would do it, but we don't own the site and don't have anyway to restrict the Google Web Crawler -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Project Hosting on Google Code" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-code-hosting/-/7ZaLYOhKUHoJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-code-hosting?hl=en.
