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Is it safe to upload private documents on Google Docs?
Google Docs is really convenient as I can upload and access my documents from anywhere in the world but I am afraid how safe it is. I don't want anybody to look at my documents.
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Yes, Google Docs is very secure.
There are two tips which can greatly improve your safety:
1) When using an unencrypted wireless connection or some other network you don't really trust, use https://docs.google.com instead of http://docs.google.com. The extra 's' means 'secure'; all traffic is encrypted. The only down-side is it's a little bit slower.
2) When you use someone else's computer (especially at an Internet cafe or at a hotel), don't forget to logout of your Google account. And when logging in, don't check "remember my password". Pretty obvious.
Here at Google we use Docs to store all our confidential documents, spreadsheets and presentations. We use the same servers and we have no worries about people being able to see our data.
Let us know if you have any further questions or concerns. Thanks!
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Inappropriate?Yes, Google Docs is very secure.
There are two tips which can greatly improve your safety:
1) When using an unencrypted wireless connection or some other network you don't really trust, use https://docs.google.com instead of http://docs.google.com. The extra 's' means 'secure'; all traffic is encrypted. The only down-side is it's a little bit slower.
2) When you use someone else's computer (especially at an Internet cafe or at a hotel), don't forget to logout of your Google account. And when logging in, don't check "remember my password". Pretty obvious.
Here at Google we use Docs to store all our confidential documents, spreadsheets and presentations. We use the same servers and we have no worries about people being able to see our data.
Let us know if you have any further questions or concerns. Thanks!
The company and 4 other people say
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I need more than this to decide if google docs is secure enough for trustees at my university to use. Private information is going to be stored on the google server, yes, but is there a terms agreement or statement somewhere that explains your security terms? What will google docs do in the event that something in fact does get leaked (barring a week password etc...)
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Hi - thanks so much for this information. So if I'm understanding this correctly, even though my document is on the web, it is not indexed, nor seen by search engines or others on the web. If I share my document, only those with permission can see it. Then, one should use https connection for actual updates when the network security is in question. Does this sound right? Also, I don't see where to update my gmail preference to use https always. Thanks much.
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Tracy, your understanding is correct. With a note that documents are publicly visible if they are explicitly published to the world by the author.
http://docs.google.com/support/bin/an...
As for https in gmail, go to 'settings', and look at the bottom of the general tab. -
Inappropriate?I've used Google docs for plenty of private docs and have felt that the collaborative features and easy Web access have been a huge benefit. It's great to hear that Google itself is eating its own dogfood. I think that fact is reflected in the relatively frequent revs on the interface which is now light years ahead of where it started. I also love the Gmail links to open attachments in Google docs.
Very, very smart.
I’m a fan
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Inappropriate?Thanks for the tip...I am a computer consultant and working with a Cable company and had them get a GMail Account solely for the Docs. It's so nice having it, since originally when installation customers it was recorded into an excel spreadsheet from two different crews. Now both use the same file simultaniously and I can make changes to it also at the same time.
Google is GREAT!!!
I’m a fan of Google and always will be.
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Inappropriate?It would be good to add an extra lever of security by letting users asign a password to a document.
So sort of like MS Word, Adobe PDF, and others have password protect the file!
I think then many business and professional users would feel much more comfortable about the great technology of online gDocs.
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?Agreed. I also can't upload a password protected MS Word Doc. It would be great to have this functionality!
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?I’d feel more confident using gmail and Google doc if Google would give me the option to accept a secure connection only (Https/SSL). I know I can type https at the beginning of the address bar but there should be an option under security to require this. This would eliminate any holes in security especially to those who doesn’t understand internet security.
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Inappropriate?Someone wrote a Greasemonkey has a script which does that: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/83112 Comments Add a comment
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Neil,
If you had a spreadsheet listing all of your online sites, usernames and passwords would you post the spreadsheet to Google docs? The spreadsheet includes bank information.
Thanks,
Don -
Did Neil ever answer???? Guess Google Docs isn't that secure if Neil won't trust it with his personal files....
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Inappropriate?There really should be default of having Google Docs over secure SSL/TLS connection because current default of unprotected connection is bad thing because of several reasons. First it should be noted that most users don't notice that there isn't any protection in connection and that makes it too easy to have information captured from network connection between user and service provider.
I know that having default as protected connection would cost in terms of extra processing power needed but otherwise, it would also be good for reputation of Google Apps. If you don't want to enable SSL by default, you should even have option to enable it by user without having to install Greasemonkey to every computer user might be using at specific time (that isn't even possible always because of limitations in user rights inside some of the computers).
Anyways, I find it that Google Docs is good for sharing content between people and publishing your notes about things but that shouldn't mean all information would be transmitted over open connection.
I’m OK, but not that happy yet.
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Inappropriate?You can enable the secure SSL site by default.
In the latest version of Gmail you can go to Settings -> Browser Connection and select "Always use https".
I just checked and when I click the link for Google Docs it takes me to the secure https site as well when I type in the http version it automatically redirects me to the secure https site.1 Comment Add a comment
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While the link from Gmail does use https with this setting, I'm not redirected when I type in http://docs.google.com... do you still see this behavior? If so, I'm curious why it happens for some and not all.
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Inappropriate?We have a strange problem where Google docs just sort of go unreadable for certain people. It's hard to explain beyond this. We get around it by just copying all of the content to a new doc and then renaming it.
I know - not entirely relevant -but your question made me think of how you can lose content from WITHIN Google Docs - not necessarily to some sort of evil hacker or something. The dreaded . . . corrupted file can strike.
However, in general, we're big fans and love to be able to share docs and freak out when we get stuck in the old mode of emailing word and excel docs around with "track changes."
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Tom, sorry to jump in here so late. If you see this again, please send us the URL of the offending document, the username of the user who can't read the document and the name/version of the web browser they are using. Also indicate permission for us to look at the structure of the document in question should we need to. Thanks.
A further point is that even in the worst-case scenario, you should always be able to select the document and export it from the Document list. -
Inappropriate?no i've searched google and found someone's documents on googledocs. So, IMO it's simply not that secure.
I’m objective
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That means they made it viewable to the world. If you mark it as private, it will not be searchable. Read the whole post before commenting.
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Inappropriate?You think just because you put the private symbol you're safe?... rustypage, if you post your valuable work online people at google still have access to it.
Think before you reply to my post. -
Inappropriate?Its completely vulnerable and I have been able to search snippets of my private data on other users accounts. You just have to do specific searches because they provide blurbs from private documents for some strange reason, so you could search for a string like "my bank password:" and potentially get results back from that portion of a private document listing someones passwords.
I’m fearing for my privacy..
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they may have fixed this since the last time i used docs, but its cause for concern. how can you trust a service that you don't pay for?
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Inappropriate?I really don't want to be argumentative - or seem like I want everyone's passwords! - but can you give an example of this? I just tried to search on "password" in the docs.google.com domain and the only hits I received were on support documents, not any of the "blurbs" you mention. I'm all for finding holes if we can, so if you can point out what's being leaked, I'd love to see it so we can try and get the information out there.
I’m undecided
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Thanks Chad! I've been following this thread for a while and the blatant claims that private Google Docs can be found online without any concrete examples makes it hard to believe the claims are true. I've used Google Docs for the last year pretty heavily and have had zero problems with finding them online. Curious if people may be confusing Google Docs with Google Sites or something. Perhaps there was an old vulnerability in Google Notebook? Either way, Docs seems pretty private to me. Sure a Google admin may be able to see my docs but that sure doesn't keep me up at night tossing and turning in fear.
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Indeed. Dan, I would be *extremely* interested in a demo of any leaked information from a non-published document. (A formerly published document which was recently unpublished does not count.)
Replying to a much earlier question by Don about whether I (a Google employee) would store website passwords, I can answer "yes" in two ways. First, Google uses Docs for all our internal document needs, we have extremely sensitive corporate material in our documents (including more than a few passwords). Second, as a regular user I use Docs to store personal documents which mean more to me than website passwords.
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