Do you do majority of your work on the Google platform? Well imagine you are working on a business plan that is needed for a meeting later that afternoon and out of nowhere, your access to the online file gets revoked. All that remains is an error message indicating that you've violated Google's terms of service.
If you are one of those people who stores your work within the cloud, suddenly being unable to access your data––especially when it has to do with violating terms of service––may sound terrifying. There have been multiple reports of it on Twitter of docs being "frozen".
In response to these issues, a Google employee tweeted about the team handling the problem and that they were looking into it. Late Tuesday, Google said in a statement that they "made a code push that incorrectly flagged a small percentage of Google Docs as abusive, which caused those documents to be automatically blocked. A fix is in place and all users should have full access to their docs."
Even if the error appeared to be just a technical glitch, the fact that Google is capable of identifying "bad" Google Docs at all is a strong reminder: Almost everything you upload, receive or type on Google's platforms are being monitored. While most people may be aware that Google scans your emails, this policy extends to other Google products, too.
"Our automated systems analyze your content to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, and spam and malware detection," reads the terms of service for Google Drive. "Google's Privacy Policy explains how we treat your personal data and protect your privacy when you use Google Drive."
Google is very up front in their privacy policy about all of the data they collect.
"We collect information about the services that you use and how you use them, like when you watch a video on YouTube, visit a website that uses our advertising services, or view and interact with our ads and content," it says.
"This includes information like your usage and preferences, Gmail messages, G+ profile, photos, videos, browsing history, map searches, docs, or other Google hosted content. Our automated systems analyze this information as it is sent and received and when it is stored."
This is extremely unsettling. However, it is to be expected. We have Google scanning our emails and reading our docs, and then we have Facebook listening to our conversations to generate ads.
For businesses who use the Google platform for all of their business needs...this should be a wake up call. An online platform like this is not the way to go for confidential information or any business relations. We encourage that businesses work on a secured platform. It is better to be safe than sorry.
