Google Docs users were affected by a security
bug during the weekend that allowed unauthorized viewers access to private files.
Specifically, Google said that the glitch resulted in a privacy issue that allowed some documents to be "inadvertently" shared with unauthorized viewers.
The search engine giant reinforced in a blog post that the security glitch allowed "a very small percentage of users [to share] some of their documents inadvertently," maintaining that the "inadvertent sharing" was limited to "people with whom the document owner, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document." Altogether, the error affected about .05 percent of the total number of users, Google said.
Google also went on to say that the security bug affected so few users because it "only could have occurred for a very small percentage of documents, and for those documents only when a specific sequence of user actions took place."
Google said that the glitch, which was detected over the weekend, occurred when the document owner, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had the ability to "change sharing permissions" after selecting multiple documents and the presentations from the documents list. However, the bug was limited within Google Apps and did not affect spreadsheets, Google said.
As part of the fix, Google said it established an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the buggy documents. Google said it then planned to e-mail the initial document owners and alert them to their affected documents. Subsequently, users would be required to manually "reshare" them if they wanted to continue their projects.
Google apologized for the incident, however, and emphasized that the company was also affected by the glitch. "We're sorry for the trouble this has caused. We understand our users' concerns. (In fact, we were affected by this bug ourselves) and we're treating this very seriously."
