Google is cautioning a few clients of its Google Photos service that they’ve had their private videos sent to outsiders by the search giant. Google’s Takeout service, that lets individuals download their information, was influenced by a “technical issue” between November 21st and November 25th a year ago. It resulted in a small number of users receiving private videos that didn’t belong to them.
Google’s nonchalant email cautioning clients doesn’t give any subtleties on what number of individuals were influenced, nor the number of individual videos that were disseminated inaccurately per account. Google fixed the issue after five days, and 9to5Google reports that under 0.01 percent of Google Photos clients who utilized Takeout was influenced. Google Photos has more than 1 billion clients, so even a small percentage will affect a critical number of individuals. Google has apologized “for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
“We are notifying people about a bug that may have affected users who used Google Takeout to export their Google Photos content between November 21 and November 25,” explains a Google spokesperson in a statement to 9to5Google. “These users may have received either an incomplete archive or videos — not photos — that were not theirs. We fixed the underlying issue and have conducted an in-depth analysis to help prevent this from ever happening again. We are very sorry this happened.”
Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Newsline Hub journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.