Google Accidentally Shares Your Docs without Permission

Oops.  Google has made a privacy boo-boo.

In a blunder that highlights some of the biggest privacy issues involving web-based services, Google sent out a notice to several users of its Document and Spreadsheets products stating that it might have accidentally shared some documents with contacts who did not have access to them.

According to the notice, this incicent was limited to users “with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document”.  Vague enough for you?

It would seem that only text documents and presentations have been affected, not spreadsheets.  The notice also contained links to each of the documents that were shared in error.

Here is the letter from Google:

Dear Google Docs user,

We wanted to let you know about a recent issue with your Google Docs account. We’ve identified and fixed a bug which may have caused you to share some of your documents without your knowledge. This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document. The issue only occurred if you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and changed the sharing permissions. This issue affected documents and presentations, but not spreadsheets.

To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually. For your reference, we’ve listed below the documents identified as being affected.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this issue may have caused. We want to assure you that we are treating this issue with the highest priority.

The Google Docs Team

Whoa. Not good.

And Google wants us to store our medical records online? I don't think so.

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• Google Docs Violated Document Privacy (blogoscoped.com)
• Google Privacy Blunder Shares Your Docs Without Permission (techcrunch.com)
• YAGG: Google Docs Sharing Quirk (arnoldit.com)
• Google stumbles again, accidentally shares docs (downloadsquad.com)
• Google Docs Shares Documents Without Permisson (ghacks.net)

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