Why Google is reading your Google Docs

Most of users for online word-processing services of Google, – Google Docs were recently taken by surprises when their documents had been blocked for violating its policies. It had been reported by users that they had lost access to wedding vows and academic research, receiving messages stating that the documents had violated its terms of service.  Moreover the problem had been reported by many users on the product forums of Google. Though Google had instantly restored the same, accusing a ruined update which had mistakenly locked users out of the documents, the incident disclosed that several users had not realised that Google had been checking the apparently private files that had been stored in Docs.

While Google had been under pressure in improving the monitor of the videos uploaded to YouTube, erase illegal content  from its search results and improve police its advertising network, some may be aware that Google Docs is monitored.  Doc is not only utilised by consumers by thousands of businesses all over the globe, having files comprising of potentially important information.

Monitoring – Disturbing Google Docs

Journalist at National Geographic, Rachael Bales had written that this kind of monitoring tends to be disturbing.  Kelly O’Mara writer also mentioned that she is of the opinion that there is a need of considering how much would be dumped in Google Docs. Though few people would read it, the terms of service of Google Drive prohibits spam, violent or hate speck, pornography, and disclosure of confidential information and much more.

 

It is applicable to files only which are shared and hence the ones which tend to be personal are probably let off. A spokesman of Google had stated that Docs together with the other files in Google Drive tend to be controlled by process that monitors abuse of its policies and mechanically is inclined in blocking files if they tend to violate them.  Contrasting to some systems that tend to escalate a suspected problem to a moderator, no involvement of a human evaluation is present.

Avert Computer Viruses/Spreading of Spams in Google Docs

The spokesman had mentioned that the main reason its process tends to read files is to avert computer viruses or the spreading of spams.  It is not known if the process of Google is used for checking pornography or any other abuse of its policies or if the policy is applicable to work and personal accounts.  When most of the users had been locked out of important documents, the company had stated that they `made a code push which had incorrectly flagged a small content of Google Docs as abusive, resulting in the documents being automatically blocked.

 

A solution was in place and all the users should have full access to their docs.  Safeguarding users from virus, malware together with other abusive content was central to user safety and apologised for the disruption and will put processes in place to prevent this from happening again’.  Though Google does not seem to charge corporate users for the access to it G Suite programs, Google Docs has been offered free of cost to its consumers like Gmail, Maps together with other services.  According to the policy of the company, it states that it tends to collect information from Docs besides other services though it is not known if it utilises it to aim at commercials.