In the latest privacy mishap, Google admits that it mistakenly shared private photos to strangers. According to Google, the leak happened while users exported their personal content from the photo-sharing service in the cloud. Though Google says that the data privacy breach affected only a small number of Google Photos users, the extent of the bug remains unclear.
Google recently sent notifications through a nonchalant email alerting users of a data breach. This data breach has affected users of Google’s Takeout app, which allows users to download data from Google apps as a backup or for use with another service. The incident affected only the users who used the app between November 21 and November 25. Though Google says it is not in a position to reveal the actual number of affected parties, the estimation is around 0.1% of one billion users worldwide.
Experts feel that Google should have handled its communication about the inadvertent disclosure of personal content in a better way. This situation shows some of the complications that companies like Google are facing by providing additional privacy features to users.
Though Google assured that it has fixed the underlying issue and has conducted an in-depth analysis to help prevent this from ever happening again, privacy experts feel history repeating.
