Google Docs is accidentally blocking access to documents

[Greg S]

Following a number of tweets griping about being blocked from accessing documents on Google Docs for alleged terms of service violations, Google has responded and is looking into the problem.

If a document is affected by the issue, an error message will be displayed explaining that the contents of the document violate Google's terms of service. There does not appear to be any pattern of which types of users are affected although a number of complaints on Twitter are from journalists. It is likely purely coincidence that many writers use Google Docs and is in no way indicative of censorship by Google.

Has anyone had @googledocs lock you out of a doc before? My draft of a story about wildlife crime was just frozen for violating their TOS.

— Rachael Bale (@Rachael_Bale) October 31, 2017

Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done except wait until Google is able to resolve the problem. This is one of the downfalls of cloud services. Users are completely reliant on the service provider to back up and protect their personal data and have little to no recourse if there does happen to be an issue.

Following the incident, this should be a good reminder to keep offline backups of important documents. Tracking site DownDetector has reported issues accessing Google Drive files in certain regions as well.

We understand your concern. The team has been made aware and is investigating. Appreciate your patience.

— Google Docs (@googledocs) October 31, 2017

For now, all that can be done is to await a fix. Service is expected to return to normal later today.

Image courtesy Engadget

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https://www.techspot.com/news/71669-google-docs-accidentally-blocking-access-documents.html

 

[psycros]

It boggles the mind that people will PAY MONEY to put their content somewhere that mega-corporations will SCAN it all in order to market you while providing NO guarantee that you'll even be able to access your own files! If you still want to use the cloud, for God's sake encrypt everything before you upload it and make regular local backups. There are any number of programs that can do these things transparently.

 

[DelJo63]

Talking about censorship - - WOW! The scanning of your docs needs more that just keyword analysis.

1. language context makes this a H U G E problem and very difficult to do correctly (if at all)
2. and it ignores the end-use of the document assuming one should not even talk about _ _ _ issues, even if used in allegorical, or teaching situation.

HEIL 1984

 

[Underdog]

The first time I read about "cloud" storage I thought what a stupid idea. You don't know who will have access to it, NSA, CIA, any skilled hacker, etc. This particular service provider is know to have no respect for anyone's privacy. You get what you deserve.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Wow google. just...wow.

If I needed another reason to move from their services, this is it. I'll have to move my online backups to dropbox or such, because how long until their "ToS" blocks encrypted files too?

 

[Uncle Al]

For all those reasons I have stopped using google's on line services. They are just too "iffy" and not reliable.

 

[petert]

Yeah, I think it is a couple of years old, I used to have documents locally backed up in a google drive and when saving it would stop me from time to time, saying something along the lines that I don't have permission ... we are talking about a professional account, my company used gmail and we had no limitations ... eventually dropped using gdrive as a backup and sync solution and started using dropbox. What is the purpose of having so many gigs of space if you can't save your stuff? Also, I was using it as mere backup, opening my stuff in MS Word, avoiding their google docs web interface as hell. Still not good enough today, IMO, very painful to use in many areas, google docs are an abomination which should have been sacked years ago.

 

[bmw95]

For all those reasons I have stopped using google's on line services. They are just too "iffy" and not reliable.

Same here. I moved my business stuff from O365 to Google Apps Business and they keep changing everything all the time without any real progress. It's like a chicken running around with its head chopped off.

I guess I'll be moving back to Office 365, which has honestly significantly improved in the past year.