Google wrongfully collected and stored the private information of thousands of people across several years, according to a new report.
On June 3rd, 404 Media reported that it had received a copy of a large Google database that included children’s voice data, home addresses and employee privacy incidents collected between 2013 and 2018. Per the publication, Google had been accidentally collecting this data.
In a statement to 404, Google said:
At Google employees can quickly flag potential product issues for review by the relevant teams. When an employee submits the flag they suggest the priority level to the reviewer. The reports obtained by 404 are from over six years ago and are examples of these flags—every one was reviewed and resolved at that time. In some cases, these employee flags turned out not to be issues at all or were issues that employees found in third party services.
Still, 404 Media notes that most of these hadn’t previously been publicly reported, even if Google had seemingly fixed them quickly. On top of that lack of transparency, it does raise questions about why such a major company mismanaged user data in the first place, especially when it comes to children.
Besides violating individual users’ privacy, 404 also explored in follow-up piece how announcements from a 2017 Nintendo Direct presentation, including one for a then-unnamed Yoshi title (later revealed to be Crafted World), were leaked online from this database by a Google contractor. Naturally, inadvertently angering a big company — especially one as litigious as Nintendo — only makes Google look even worse.
Image credit: Nintendo
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