The search giant claims that the bug has been already fixed. The bug did not affect spreadsheets:
“As part of the fix, we used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as having been affected. We then emailed the document owners to point them to their affected documents in case they need to re-share them,” reads a Google blog post.
According to Google, the flaw affected around 0.5 per cent of customers. The company stressed out that the flaw required a specific sequence of user actions in order to have the documents accessed by unauthorised users.
In addition, the sharing was limited to people with whom the document owner /collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document.
“A flaw in the system meant that the documents of some users were marked down as collaborative items, allowing third parties signed up to the system to access and amend them. The company has since claimed that the flaw has now been fixed.
We’re sorry for the trouble this has caused. We understand our users’ concerns (in fact, we were affected by this bug ourselves) and we’re treating this very seriously. We hope this explanation provides greater clarity.”