Google accidentally gave strangers access to users’ private videos, the company says

Some Google users are learning that strangers might have accidentally received access to their private videos.

Google is telling people that their videos could’ve been downloaded by strangers, CNBC reported.

Many people use Google Photos to store and back up photos and videos, CNBC said. Users can download a copy of their private data, and that’s where the problem occurred, CNBC said.

When people went to download their data, they were sometimes given access to strangers’ videos, according to CNBC. The “technical issue” happened from Nov. 21 to 25, HuffPost reported.

Google confirmed the issue to 9To5Google after people began sharing notices they received from the company.

“Unfortunately, during this time, some videos in Google Photos were incorrectly exported to unrelated users’ archives,” a Google statement shared on Twitter said. “One of more videos in your Google Photos account was affected by this issue.”

Less than 0.01% of people who exported data were affected, 9To5 Google reported, but it’s unclear how many users that is. No other products were affected, 9To5Google said.

“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,” a Google spokesperson told multiple outlets. “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.”

This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 1:33 PM with the headline "Google accidentally gave strangers access to users’ private videos, the company says."