Yeah, Google’s commitment to privacy isn’t going so well with this recent revelation. If you use Google Photos, there’s something you need to know and if you care about your privacy, you should be concerned and here’s why.
If you take lots of photos and like sharing them with your friends or family members, you’ll notice Google Photos creates a link(https://photos.app.goo.gl/….) for a photo or an album for you to share. Well, here’s the scary part, that link is semi-public.
That link can be accessed either from another different Google account and worse even when you open the link in incognito mode. I tried it myself – created an album link and opened it on a private/incognito tab and voila – my pictures in Mombasa and that scared me to my core.
First noticed by Robert, the share interface looks familiar to the one Google Drive has in that when you share a link, Google Drive lets you know who you’re sharing it with and thus if you use Google Photos, you think that link is private but it isn’t.
Why we should all be worried
This is a huge privacy flaw that could have been gong for a while especially if that link gets in the wrong hands. Google needs to do better and let users know that the Google Photos link they are sharing isn’t that private and that anyone with the link can access the photos.
There used to a better way to share the photos using Google Drive but that option was shut down.
