A bug in the Google Takeout download service has led to the unintentional sharing of some videos with others by some users.
This week, when Google started sending notifications to affected users, the problem became known. The incident took place between 21 November and 25 November last year.
The bug identified by Google as a technical problem was caused if users tried to export Google’s “Import your results.” The app has been designed to allow individuals to build copies of their files, including photos and videos on Google Photos and optimize the process.
Google confirms in the email to affected users that those who copy their files via Takeout might have ended up with someone else’s videos in their Google Photos backups.
It is said that this question mainly concerns those who demanded their data to be accessed between 21 November and 25 November last year.
“Unfortunately, during this time, some videos in Google Photos were incorrectly exported to unrelated users’ archives. One or more videos in your Google Photos account was affected by the issue,” Google wrote in the notification.
What the service, though, could not tell was how many of the videos a person could have provided in the event.
The Internet giant has told consumers that downloaders might consider it incomplete or include videos of other individuals.
Google also informs users that the problem has been addressed and encourages them to export their content and to delete the previous export.
“We are notifying people about a bug that may have affected users who used Google Takeout to export their Google Photos content between November 21 and November 25. These users may have received either an incomplete archive, or videos—not photos—that were not theirs,” a Google spokesperson told
“We fixed the underlying issue and have conducted an in-depth analysis to help prevent this from ever happening again. We are very sorry this happened,” Google also said, noting that less than 0.01% of Google Photos users were impacted by the incident, and that the bug “did not impact other data type of the data users can download via Takeout.”