Your Private Videos From Google Photos Could Be In A Stranger’s Archive

Google has issued an alert saying that due to an error in the Google Photos service, private videos and images of a few users have been shared with strangers. The Takeout service of Google that allows the user to download the data was hampered by a technical glitch back in November 2019.

The email sent by Google lacks details like how many people were affected by the issue or the number of videos distributed mistakenly. The issue prevailed between November 21, 2019, and November 25, 2019. After a period of five days, the technical glitch was rectified by Google.

As reported by 9to5Google, only 0.01% of Google Photos users who use Google Takeout were affected. Google Photos has around 1 billion users, so a small percentage can also affect a large number of users.

Whoa, what? @googlephotos? pic.twitter.com/2cZsABz1xb

— Jon Oberheide (@jonoberheide) February 4, 2020

Google is sending out emails to the affected users informing them about the Google Photos data leak.

These users might have encountered an incomplete archive or might have received videos that didn’t belong to them. Google concluded its statement by apologizing and assuring people that the issue has been resolved and it will not occur in the future.

Google has further asked people to delete the previous export attempt and do it again. The search giant has also clarified that the bug has only affected the Takeout service and none of the other services were affected.