Nightmare Google Photos bug sent private videos to the wrong people

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Google has disclosed a nightmare of a security and privacy bug affecting Google Photos users: for a time, it was possible for private videos to be downloaded by unrelated users. The bug happened through Google Takeout, a service that lets you download archives of your Google Data. Apparently, the wrong videos were included in these user-generated archives, resulting in the users getting local copies of somebody else's videos.

Google has been sending emails to affected Takeout users. In the email, which was first spotted by 9to5Google, Google writes, "Some videos in Google Photos were incorrectly exported to unrelated user's archives. One or more videos in your Google Photos account was affected by this issue. If you downloaded your data, it may be incomplete, and it may contain videos that are not yours." Google writes that the bug happened "between November 21, 2019 and November 25, 2019."

Whoa, what? @googlephotos? pic.twitter.com/2cZsABz1xb

- Jon Oberheide (@jonoberheide) February 4, 2020

While this message is directed to Google Takeout users who tried to download their own data and accidentally got someone else's, we've yet to see a message directed to the "unrelated users" whose videos ended up in the archive. We've asked Google if it plans to notify users who have had their private videos exposed, and we'll update this article if the company responds.

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