Google has disabled Android TV’s ability to view Google Photos uploads as a screensaver, after a user discovered it was dishing out access to other people’s photos.
Via the Google Home app, Twitter user ‘pransanth’ showcased the ability to access a giant scrolling list of Google Photos accounts. After selecting a random name from the list, that person’s private Google Photos uploads were being displayed to him in the Ambient Mode screensaver.
When I access my Vu Android TV through the @Google Home app, and check the linked accounts, it basically lists what I imagine is every single person who owns this television. This is shocking incompetence. pic.twitter.com/5DGwrArsco
— prashanth (@wothadei) March 3, 2019
The user believed the account may have offered access to the accounts of every other person who owned the same Vu Android TV television set, but that’s yet to be consumed. Google has admitted the quite spectacular security bug and is taking the feature offline while investigating the problem.
“We take our users’ privacy extremely seriously,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “While we investigate this bug, we have disabled the ability to remotely cast via the Google Assistant or view photos from Google Photos on Android TV devices.”
It’s currently unclear how many users the bug is currently affecting, bit it’s highly unlikely this is an isolated incident. It’s also unclear whether other Android TV devices are affected by the bug. The TV in question runs on Android 7 and hasn’t received a security update since 2017. As XDA developers reports, another Twitter user said he was able to access the bug using a television from a different, unnamed manufacturer.
This is clearly a google accounts issue and NOT an problem with TV manufacturer.
Here able see the same with another manufacturer's TV as well: pic.twitter.com/Jr3SDG5RkV
— Aarjith Nandakumar (@aarjithn) March 3, 2019
Is Google doing enough to safeguard the privacy of users? Do you trust the company to take care of your accounts and personal data? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.