Google Docs Bug Shares Your Documents Without Permission

Over the weekend a confirmed Google Docs bug may have shared your private Google Documents with others, without your permission. Google said this “affected less than 0.05% of all documents.” What exactly happened?

“The inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom the document owner, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document,” Google said. Google then unshared those documents automatically and then “emailed the document owners to point them to their affected documents in case they need to re-share them.” In the mean time, data that could have been shared without knowledge and permission, could have been financial documents, personal correspondence and even more sensitive information. Clearly this does not look good for Google’s case in making Google Docs more appealing to enterprises.

I asked, how does Google think this security breach will impact those considering using Google Health to share their medical history with friend and doctors. Who knows who can get their hands on this information, if there is a security breach or an “inadvertent sharing” bug?