Our biggest fear when using cloud storage as backup is real – we’re not talking about hacker leaks, but rather leaks accidently done by the company itself.
Google had recently notified Google Takeout users that their videos on Google Photos may have been exported onto other users’ archives – what in tarnation?!
For the uninitiated, Google Takeout is a one-stop data backup service that lets you export content and data from other Google apps like Google Photos, Drive, Chrome, Calendar and more.
Whoa, what? @googlephotos? pic.twitter.com/2cZsABz1xb
— Jon Oberheide (@jonoberheide) February 4, 2020
Back in November last year however, a “technical issue” made it so that users who requested a download of their data from the service face the problem.
The issue took place within a five-day period and most likely anyone who requested for a download within that period. Google notified affected users that their downloaded data may be incomplete and may also contain videos belonging to other people.
The company then recommended users to perform a new export of their content and remove their previous one. 9to5Google reports that Google had confirmed the issue to be resolved and had issued an apology for the incident.
This is obviously a huge deal and deals a massive blow to the reputation of cloud storage services – this is continue to fuel debates about data security when using these services.