Data Privacy concerns on Google services have surged up on a recent note as Russian internet users are taking help of social media and other media resources to deliberately prove that their Google Document files are going public by appearing in the results of various search engines.
Yandex, the Russia based internet company has said that some of its users have started complaining about this issue from early this week and are showing scores of such documents as proof to prove the authenticity in their argument. This includes a display of an internal memo from a Russian bank, drafted press summaries, company business plans which are supposed to be stored in Google Docs as private records but is said to appearing in the search results.
Google after listening to all the reports has reacted by saying that unless the authors of the docs customized the file appearances as public, the search engine bots couldn’t have sourced the documents. The internet juggernaut also argues that the displayed document links could have been made available for public access and search by the users on a deliberate note.
Ilya Grabovsky, the spokesperson from Yandex said that its search engine, like all other search engines in the market yields files that do not require credentials for access.
In other news related to Google Chrome privacy concerns, a San Francisco based software engineer’s find says that certain Google chrome extensions like ‘Stylish’ are found recording the history of the user’s browser activity without their consent. Robert Theaton is the man who argues that the said chrome extension has been keeping a track of his browser activity since January 2017. He added in his statement that the activity is not only being recorded but is also being transmitted to remote servers.
The said browser plug-in which is being reported to be used on Mozilla Firefox and Chrome browser by 1.8 million users worldwide may have been recording the browsing history of all the users who have downloaded it. This could trigger data privacy concerns as it makes users identifiable in the real world, making them vulnerable to hackers and blackmailers.
Google is yet to react on this issue.
