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It also makes sense that a company might want to know who has or who has not accessed certain files. The emails you send, after all, are supposed to be work related and in many cases it makes sense that your boss or IT head could pull them up. "It’s important to note that your administrator has access to any data you store in this account, including your email," Google confirms on its G Suite account permissions help page.Īnd sure, if you're paying attention, you likely realized this already. It's pretty wild.įor example, did you open a specific file in a shared Google Drive? That's something your boss can find out. Notably, Shelton also calls attention to the fact that, depending on the version of G Suite your company uses, your employer has access to practically every single thing you do on the platform. "Documents within your G Suite domain are not end-to-end encrypted, meaning that Google has everything they need to read your data," Shelton writes.
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Shelton, who is currently employed as the principal researcher at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, writes that this access may result in your personal data being handed over to government officials if Google is legally compelled to do so. We are helpfully reminded of this fact by ex-Google employee Martin Shelton, who on Wednesday published a lengthy blog post detailing all the ways Google itself can access the contents of your G Suite account. And yes, that includes the ability to read your email drafts. then, in all likelihood, your company has complete access to everything you do on those services.
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If your company, like many these days, uses Google's paid G Suite of products - Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc. Uh, yeah, we need to talk about your corporate email. Privacy Please is an ongoing series exploring the ways privacy is violated in the modern world, and what can be done about it.
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