Google drive movies legal password#

The fact is that Greenburg (accidentally, but that shouldn’t matter) made the folder available to anyone with the URL, and his son (accidentally, but that also shouldn’t matter) revealed the URL. The fact that it was not indexed by search engines doesn’t seem like it should matter at all. In short, the plaintiff’s argument is that security by obscurity should be legally protected. Plaintiff alleges that the Google Drive had limitations and thus persons attempting to access The Google Drive needed to obtain the exact URL into the browser.

Stumble upon the Google Drive on a web search-the internet denizen wishing to access Therefore, it wasn’t just “anyone with a browser” who could What’s more, the Google Drive was not indexed by any search engines, Setting did not per se render the Google Drive public, given that the URL was a string ofĦ8 characters. Setting that allowed anyone with the URL to access the site.

Google drive movies legal password#

Plaintiff acknowledges that the portion of the Google DriveĪccessed by Amanda was not password protected Plaintiff had inadvertently enabled the Wray seems like a terrible human being in oh so many ways, but it seems ridiculous to argue that she violated the CFAA. Even if it feels icky that the defendant here, Amanda Wray, messed with the folder, none of that would have happened if Greenburg had properly secured the account (which is the default setting - so he had to proactively choose to share the folder differently). But, it seems clear that the fault was with the owner of the Google Drive folder, Mark Greenburg, who failed to properly secure it. Renamed, and publicly disclosed contents of the Google Drive. She reviewed, downloaded, deleted, added, reorganized, URL and asked a third party to make a hyperlink for the URL. Which were stored on the server.” One of the photographs displayed the URL to the Googleĭrive, and that photograph made its way into Amanda’s possession, where she noticed the

He responded to his accuser byĮmailing “13 photographs of public Facebook comments, made by his accuser, some of In 2021, Plaintiff’s son was accused of defamation. Here is the description of what happened next from the court opinion: Apparently without realizing it, he set the folder to be accessible to anyone with the URL.Īt some point, things got messy, with the son of the school board member being accused of defamation. The father of a member of that school board, who seemed (perhaps reasonably) concerned about the activity in this group, started collecting information on what was going on in the group and storing it on a Google Drive account. So, you get an idea of what we’re dealing with here.

“dedicated to propagating anti-mask policies, anti-vaccine policies, anti-LGBTQ policies,Īnd anti-Critical Race Theory policies within the Scottsdale Unified School District.” As described in the lawsuit the group is: So, let’s start this one off by noting that the defendant in this case seems to be a generally terrible person, who runs a Facebook group focused on spreading ridiculous nonsense regarding her local school district. But in this recent ruling the judge went the other direction ( first noted by Evan Brown).

If you accidentally leave your Google Drive accessible to anyone with the URL, and someone goes there and deletes stuff, is that “unauthorized access” and a violation of the CFAA? To me, the answer should be absolutely not. Mon, Jun 27th 2022 09:30am - Mike Masnick