Google may have 'incorrectly' exported some of your videos in Google Photos to strangers

Google today started alerting users about a "technical issue" that may have caused some of their videos in Google Photos to be sent to other users'' archives.

Google says the "technical issue" affected the 'Takeout' service for Google Photos between November 21 and November 25 last year. Between November 21 and November 25, the company says Google Photos content of users who requested performed an export may have been incorrectly sent to some other users' archives.

Those of you who downloaded your Google Photos data during the affected period may find that it is incomplete and contains videos that belong to someone else. Google says the underlying issue was identified and resolved on November 25, 2019, and that no other service was affected by it. The search giant also claims that less than 0.01% of Google Photos users who used Google Takeout to export their content during the affected period were actually affected.

In case you had performed an export of your Google Photos content between November 21 and November 25 last year, it is highly recommended that you perform another export and delete your previous export.

Google provided the following comment to 9to5Google regarding the technical issue:

We are notifying people about a bug that may have affected users who used Google Takeout to export their Google Photos content between November 21 and November 25. These users may have received either an incomplete archive, or videos—not photos—that were not theirs. 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.

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