A glitch that hit Google LLC’s account backup tool last November allowed users to download the private videos of strangers, the search giant has disclosed.

The issue, first reported by 9to5Google early this morning, occurred between Nov. 21 and Nov. 25. It affected the Takeout archiving tool that the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary provides to let consumers download their data from their Google accounts.

Takeout exports the files a user keeps in Gmail, Drive, Google Photos and other Google products as a compressed folder that can be used as a backup or to migrate the data to another service. But for some, Takeout malfunctioned during the download process and exported the videos they had in Google Photos to other users’ archives.

Google has sent out emails notifying affected users about the mix-up. “Some videos in Google Photos were incorrectly exported to unrelated users’ archives. One or more videos in your Google Photos account was affected by this issue. If you downloaded your data, it may be incomplete, and it may contain videos that are not yours,” Google warns in the message.

Fortunately, the scope of the incident was fairly limited. The search giant said that only 0.01% of Photos users attempting to create Takeout archives while the bug was live had their videos included in others’ file exports. And images stored in Google Photos apparently weren’t exposed. 

 “We fixed the underlying issue and have conducted an in-depth analysis to help prevent this from ever happening again,” Google said in an apology issued to 9to5Google.

Google’s disclosure of the privacy breach came just hours before Ireland’s top privacy regulator announced this morning that it’s launching a formal investigation into how the search giant handles user data. Specifically, the watchdog will be looking into the way the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary processes location data and whether it’s sufficiently transparent in communicating the practice to consumers. 

Photo: Google