Google says some videos uploaded to Photos app were shared with strangers
Tech giant apologizes and says the underlying issue has been fixed
Google said Monday that some customer videos uploaded to its Photos app may have been shared with complete strangers due to a "technical issue."
The tech giant's photo cloud app, with more than 500 million users, had a technical issue that allowed videos from some users to be exported onto the cloud accounts of other users between Nov. 21 and Nov. 25, according to a notice from the company to affected customers.
"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. These users may have received either an incomplete archive or videos — not photos — that were not theirs," a Google spokesperson told FOX Business in a statement.
"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," the statement continued.
APP CREATORS WHO ALLEGED APPLE ANTITRUST VIOLATIONS TRY TO RALLY DEVELOPERS AGAINST BIG TECH
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GOOGL | ALPHABET INC. | 155.97 | +0.50 | +0.32% |
Two-factor authentification app Duo Security Co-founder Jon Oberheide posted the notice to his Twitter account and followed up with the news in another tweet calling the technical issue a "big screw up" for Google.
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"To be clear, this is a big screw-up," Oberhedie wrote. "I hope the number of affected parties is small, but the impact to those parties could be high ... and very unsettling. But my real beef is with this nonchalant and non-specific notification email. Hopefully, Google follows up with more comms."
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The Google Photos bug did not affect other apps, according to Google.