Christina Phillips looks at disconnects in Account Level Security and Advanced Search. I agree with Christina that this is a problem but for different reasons.
I’ve personally never seen a business where the descriptions of an account in the chart were so sensitive that users couldn’t see them. In most cases, the descriptions aren’t descriptive enough not to mention so descriptive that they would cause concern. The problem I have is that the message returned is that the account doesn’t exist, when clearly, it exists, the user is just denied access.
This is similar to the problem that happens when user accidently turn on advanced security. It appears that the account don’t exist instead of indicating that security is restricted. Check out the whole article for details.