More Google Leaks Give Rare Glimpse Into The Company's Privacy and Security Issues
It’s only been days since we last heard about a bombshell array of documents about Google’s search algorithms come to light and now, a similar matter has just arisen.
The company has just confirmed the authenticity of the leaked database which proves a rather rare insight into the Android maker’s long list of security and privacy breaches that were flagged.
The report was first obtained by 404 Media who spoke about thousands of such papers that were flagged by Google internally due to serious issues of privacy and security between the period 2013 to 2018.
Google spoke on this front, adding how they were mostly authentic but some were linked to services belonging to third parties so they did not cause a massive amount of concern.
Furthermore, the company’s spokesperson added that workers submitting a flag when they see something concerning is not unusual. It just helps to add a sense of priority for reviewers. And the fact that they go back six years means they’ve been amended and reviewed and no longer exist.
Google further went on to downplay the claims by explaining how some things getting flagged are not any issues, to begin with as they come from services owned by third parties.
So as explained by 404 Media as well, many of the instances affected just a few people and therefore it didn’t take long to find a solution. When you consider this as one big and whole, Google’s internal report is proof of how a company of this scale ends up managing and mismanaging a huge number of data belonging to people’s lives that is often very personal and deemed sensitive too.
Examples on this front entail the biggest security matters including how governmental users of Google ended up transitioning products on the consumer level. This led to the data based in the US not being provided to the customer any longer.
Meanwhile, another report spoke about a massive glitch seen on Google Street View where filters were provided to the service transcription and designed to remove license plates that couldn’t do their job the right way.
Now, Google Street View intentionally entails a database of plates geolocated through its Street View.
Another major incident was highlighted when an error inside the company’s speech service ended up recording children’s speech information for up to 1000 hours. But thankfully, the report did add how the tech giant deleted all such material in this context.
There were a host of other cases being discussed including how people were altering accounts belonging to customers on Google’s advertising platform which manipulates tracking codes to Google’s YouTube algorithm for recommendations, depending on the user’s deleted history of videos watched.
Another example being discussed included how the company’s ex-worker got access to the firm’s private YouTube videos linked to Nintendo and therefore had the data leaked before the video game could make the right announcements.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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