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You can publish the URL online or send it to your mailing lists to share it with a large group of people. By turning on link sharing, Google Drive produces a URL that gives access to the file. But it also has a link-sharing feature that enables you to share documents with anyone without explicitly including them in the document’s access list. Google Drive lets you share your documents with specific people by selecting their Google Account emails. Does viewing publicly shared Google Docs reveal your identity?
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The following post focuses on link-sharing in Google Docs, but the same rules also apply to other file types shared in Google Drive. In this post, I will go over the privacy issues of Google Drive link-sharing and whether malicious actors can use publicly shared Google Drive files to gather sensitive information about users. Can he see who I am? Can he trace me by IP address or by my Google Drive account? I saw the video in my Google Drive and deleted it but now I am concerned,” the user asked. I clicked and viewed the video and then realized the owner was stalking me and trying to find out my identity. “ person sent me a public link to a video on their Google Drive. But like all online tools that provide an open environment for many people to share data, Google Docs entails privacy risks.Ī while back, one of the readers of TechTalks raised expressed concern that a malicious actor was using Google Drive to stalk him and find his identity. And when it comes to working on documents online, few tools match the power and versatility of Google Drive and Google Docs. Every day, millions of people use Google Docs to share and collaborate on documents.
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