Internet giant Google has said its document writing tool Google Documents is secure, even as Russian internet users discovered scores of files that appeared to be intended for private use.
The Russian internet company Yandex said some users had contacted the company to say that its public search engine was yielding what looked like personal Google Documents files, suggesting there may have been a data breach.
On Wednesday night, Russian social media users started posting scores of such documents, including an internal memo from a Russian bank, press summaries and company business plans. The veracity of those documents could not be independently confirmed.
Google said in a statement that search engines can only turn up Google documents that had either been deliberately made public by its authors or when a user publishes a link to a document and makes it available for public access and search.
The firm said: “Saving and protecting users’ personal data is our main priority.
“Google Documents is a highly protected tool for joint work and it is working correctly.”
Ilya Grabovsky, a spokesman for Yandex, said its search only yields files that do not require log-ins or passwords.
He added that the files were also turning up in other search engines.
