Google says it accidentally sent some users’ private videos to strangers

Nice! Google has informed some Google Photos users that their private videos may have been accidentally shared with strangers. Google apologized on Tuesday for accidentally sending some users’ private videos to strangers. The tech giant said it affected people who used Google Takeout between November 21 and November 25 may have received videos that were posted by strangers.

“The underlying issue has been identified and resolved. We recommend you perform another export of your content and delete your prior at this time,” wrote Google in the email it sent to affected accounts. Google did not specify whether any other forms of media like GIFs or images were incorrectly shared. It’s also unclear if other Google products, all of which are linked to Takeout, were affected by this bug.

A commentator in a rising Reddit thread claimed that nearly 3% of video files in his Google Photos archive were not his and seemed to belong to 3-4 different accounts. “There is enough identifying info in some of these ones to find the owners,” he added.

“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,” a Google spokesperson said. “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.”