In Google Drive you can save everything including personal documents which you wouldn’t want anyone to see when searching on Google. Normally this should not be a problem in the vast majority of cases, although we will explain how to check it to give you peace of mind by keeping your documents safe.
It turns out that a simple Google search with the parameter website: drive.google.com he can reveal other people’s documents saved in Google Drive, like exams, books or practically anything. This is not a security issue, but a configuration issue and we’ll tell you how to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.
Documents that do not belong to you, visible
Can you imagine if your valuable Google Drive documents were visible to strangers? But it could happen to you only if certain conditions are met
The problem is: Google Search allows us to indicate that only results from a certain domain are displayed with the parameter Site:, So, if we do searches like “exam site: drive.google.com”, we will get results for documents with the name Exam saved in Google Drive, saved by other people and which we can open and see. It is not easy to imagine how problematic this can be in many cases.
And why is this? Before you beat yourself up, you need to keep in mind that for this to happen two conditions must be met which, as a standard, should not happen:
- Let the document be shared as public. That is, anyone can open it (with or without modification permission, it doesn’t matter), from its link.
- That it’s linked to somewhere on the web. For Google to include it in its results, it must have “seen” it somewhere on the web. In other words, what Google shows in its results are not all public Drive documents, but only those that are linked somewhere.
How to prevent this from happening to your documents and files
Knowing the above, we explain how to check that your documents are safe from prying eyes. The most important thing from you is that your documents are not public, because that’s what you control. If they are public, anyone can share them anywhere on the Internet where Google sees them, such as on social networks or forums.
You can check if a Google Drive file is visible to third parties from Google Drive by tapping the ⋮ button next to its name and tapping Manage access
In the section general access, You will see that it indicates that access is restricted or Someone with the link, which means that the document is public and accessible to anyone with the link. Click edit to edit it Limit, which makes the file private.
When a document is restricted, only you and people you specifically designate can open it. If you want to share the document with someone, do so privately from the ⋮ menu and pressing Sharethen include the address of the Gmail account you will share it with.
In this way, only you and these Gmail accounts will be able to open the document even if it shows up on Google or someone sends the link to someone else. This is the best way to ensure that your documents are not visible to anyone in the search engine.
Cover image | Generated with AI
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