The Google Controversy: It Had Accidentally Sent Some Users’ Private Videos To Strangers
While tons and tons of people blindly rely on Google to store their photos and videos, circumstances prove that people should reconsider.
Key Highlights:
- On Tuesday, Google had apologised that it had accidentally sent some users’ private videos to strangers
- Those who use ‘Google Takeout’ between Nov 21-Nov 25, might have received videos that were posted by strangers, Google had said
- Google said that they are striving hard to fix the underlying problem ever since
Here’s a detailed analysis:
On Tuesday, Google had confirmed that some people had received private videos from strangers that were uploaded on Google photos. Most people that used Google Photos in order to back up videos and photos stored on their phones. There is an option that Google provides, from where people can download a copy of private data, called Google Takeout.
However, when people tried using Google Takeout, as an option to download a copy of their own content, they were ‘accidentally’ given some videos that were uploaded by people they didn’t know. Google, owned by Alphabet, is telling people that the videos were uploaded by people they didn’t know. These videos, in turn, were being downloaded by strangers.
As per a Google spokesperson, they are saying that Google is trying hard to identify and notify people about a bug that may have affected users. This is specifically for users that has used Google Takeout to export their Google photos content between November 21 and November 25.
Google had said earlier that less than 0.01 percent of people that exported data during the time period were affected greatly.
This situation is a horrendous one and shows that even companies like Google are facing problems by providing additional privacy to users. Actually, Google Takeout is meant to be a feature that allows people to have more control over what they store on Google. This was also aimed at allowing them to download all of their data, allowing them to either back it up properly, or much before their Google account is deleted.
One person had gotten an apology email from Google
Whoa, what? @googlephotos? pic.twitter.com/2cZsABz1xb
— Jon Oberheide (@jonoberheide) February 4, 2020
Lastly, Google says that anyone that has received emails like these, must try to export again and delete the prior attempt.
