Flaw in Google Photos Sent Millions of Private Videos to Strangers

Based on a recent email by Google to some of its users, its Takeout service that allows the users to download their data was affected by a technical issue between 21st and 25th November.

The service accidentally sent private videos of Google Photos users to strangers. As per a report from 9to5Google, private videos of around 0.01 percent of users were sent out to complete strangers.

Even though the ‘technical issue’ affected only 0.01 percent of the Google photos users, but considering the over 1 billion users of Google photos, this small percentage shows a significant number (millions) of users were affected.

For context, Google Photos had 500 million users back in May 2017.

Even though Google’s email does not provide any information regarding the number of people that were affected, nor the number of videos that were accidentally reported. However, we know the issue was fixed within five days.

Google’s Statement

While talking to 9to5Google, a Google spokesperson explained,

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. 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.


  • Google has been having a lot of problems ever since the new CEO moved a lot of its operations to India. Bad Youtube policies, the chrome bug, and security breach is just some of the. I have heard now that they are looking to get offices and move operations to Poland.


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