Google recently announced a new policy for cloud storage service Drive, which will soon begin to restrict access to files deemed to violate the company’s policies. As explained in a new blog post, Google will take active steps to identify files hosted on its platform that violate its terms of service or abuse program policies.
These files will be marked to their owners and automatically restricted, which means they can no longer be shared with others and everyone except the owner will have their access rights revoked. The company explained: This will help ensure that the owners of the Google Drive project fully understand the status of its content, and it will also help ensure that users are protected from abusive content.
New Google Drive Policy
According to Google, the motivation behind the policy change is to block abuse of its services. This broad scope includes cybercriminal activities, hate speech, and content that may endanger children, as well as sexual material.
“We need to curb abuses that threaten our ability to provide these services, and we require everyone to abide by (our policy) to help us achieve this goal,” Google pointed out in its policy document.
After we are notified that we may violate the policy, we may review the content and take action, including restricting access to the content, deleting the content, and restricting or terminating user access to Google products.
However, the distinction between legitimate documents and content that violates the abuse policy is still far from clear. In the policy document, Google explained that it may make exceptions based on artistic, educational , documentary, or scientific considerations, indicating that there will be some editing factors in the process.
It’s easy to imagine a situation where a user’s files are forbidden to access without a valid reason, and it is not clear whether their intimate photos violate the abuse policy or whether they are outside of art.
As explained in the latest blog post, if someone believes that the document is unfairly restricted, there is a system that can request a review of the decision, but it is unclear how Google will handle this process and how long it may take.
TechRadar Pro asked Google to comment on the interference that the new policy may cause to ordinary users and to clarify the review process. The company provided the following statement: Google Drive has been working hard to protect the safety of our users and society, and at the same time always respect privacy. Similar to Gmail’s long-standing protection of users from phishing and malware attacks, these same protections Bringing measures to Google Drive is essential to ensure that hard drives are as safe as possible for all users. However, there is no information that the content may be misclassified.