Your Google Photos video backups may have been sent to complete strangers
A Google Takeout bug apparently resulted in some downloaded videos going to other people's archives last November.
Some of the videos in your Google Photos backup may have ended up in other people's archives.
Google Takeout lets you download a backup of your Google app data, but a glitch saw some of that data go astray last November. If you used the tool to download videos from Google Photos between Nov. 21 and 25, some of them may have ended up in random people's archives, as previously reported by 9to5Google.
"These users may have received either an incomplete archive, or videos -- not photos -- that were not theirs," a Google spokesperson said in an emailed 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."
Whoa, what? @googlephotos? pic.twitter.com/2cZsABz1xb
— Jon Oberheide (@jonoberheide) February 4, 2020
The search giant alerted people to the problem Monday, and suggested that anyone affected should delete the previous export and do another. It noted that less than 0.01% of Photos users were impacted, and the bug didn't affect other Google apps.
First published at 3:20 a.m. PT.
Updated at 3:52 a.m. PT: Adds more detail.
