Every day, millions of people use Google Docs to share and collaborate on documents.
[A] person sent me a public link to a video on their Google Drive.
Can he see who I am?
Can he trace me by IP address or by my Google Drive account?
First, lets see how link-sharing works.
Does viewing publicly shared Google Docs reveal your identity?
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By turning on link sharing, Google Drive produces a URL that gives access to the file.
Link sharing is widely used to share press releases, online courses and other public documents.
Some organizations use link sharing to collaborate on internal documents (itsa terrible idea).
Explicitly shared documents show the name and avatar of users who have currently opened the document.
It also shows a full history of edits made by each user.
Their avatars and names will always be visible when theyre viewing the document.
Bottom line: Viewing publicly shared Google Docs does not reveal your identity.
If you accidentally open a Google Doc, the owner wont be able to gather information about your account.
Neither will they gain access to information about your rig, IP address or geographical location.
Does editing publicly shared Google Docs reveal your identity?
Google Docs keeps a history of all edits made to a document.
Note: Editing rules apply to all native Google file types, including Docs, Sheets and Slides.
Does adding publicly shared file to your Google Drive reveal your identity?
This feature is only meant for convenience, organization and easy access to shared files.
It doesnt reveal your identity to the owner of the file.
Also take note that this feature doesnt create a copy of the file in your Google Drive.
If the owner revokes access, you will not be able to enter the file anymore.
They wont even know youve added the file to your drive.
Some senders useemail and link trackersto collect information about users.
When you hit a tracked link, youre not directly taken to the destination.
If youre not careful, you wont notice that you have just been tracked.
Below is a tracked link.
If it doesnt start with https://docs.google.com then its not an authentic Google Docs link.
Theres another way to avoid clicking on tracked links by accident.
you could directly choose the icon to initiate the file in Google Docs.
If the icon doesnt appear, then theres something wrong with the link.
A final privacy consideration when using publicly shared Google Docs: Be very careful of links inside documents.
Google Docs makes sure document owners cant track IP addresses and unit information of visitors.
But theres no guarantee about the safety and privacy of the links inside the document.
verify to check the destination of links inside the document.
They might go through trackers, giving the owner the capability to collect information about visitors.
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