Google has admitted to sending more than 100,000 private user videos to strangers

Google has apologised after a bug on one of its apps led to over 100,000 private videos accidentally being sent to strangers.

Last November a bug affected Google's 'Take Out' app, which allows user to download all the data Google stores on them and convert it into an archive file.

— Jon Oberheide (@jonoberheide) February 4, 2020

"If you downloaded your data, it may be incomplete, and it may contain videos that are not yours" the company support page said.

Google has declined to say how many accounts were involved, but a spokesman told the BBC it was "less than 0.01%" of Google Photo's one billion users that were affected by the bug. That still makes the total near 100,000 people.

The technology giant said in a statement, "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."

Tech giants in the spotlight over privacy

The revelation comes as more and more tech giants are placed in the spotlight over online safety, privacy, and data protection issues.

Facebook has come under scrutiny from the children's protection agency the NSPCC over its Messenger Kids app, which due to encryption may make it more difficult to source online predators.

If you attempted a data download between 21st and the 25 of November 2019, Google recommends that you delete the archive file and request a data transfer again.

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