Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

support.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 295 posts

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#231

Post by zymhan »

manigandham wrote: post #167
kstrauser wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be true, but nowhere in the UI does it recommend that. If you want to share a file, nothing suggests you consider sharing a folder instead. And even then, we'd still have to find and disable all of the folders that had been shared with the ex-associate. That would reduce the number of items to un-share, but the fundamental problem of having no easy way to find and handle each item is still there. Yeah, we'…

It's not a UI thing. It's a general recommendation about workflows because folders are usually easier to manage than files. Have you tried using Google Groups? Add them to a single "external associates" group and then you can just edit group membership in the future instead of managing files.

You need the ability to verify that no files are shared with them. "Adhering to a workflow" isn't sufficient.

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#232

Post by fpgaminer »

Simulacra wrote: post #204
fpgaminer wrote: post #25

Related to this bug, some time ago I started getting spam on my Google Calendar. Not sure if Google ever fixed it, but basically Google would automatically add events to your calendar when you got an invite in your email. Honestly, it's a nice feature; saves a couple clicks every time I get an invite. The bug is that it applied even if the email was spam. There was no workaround, other than disabling the feature comp…

Google has very little incentive to fix the problem, and outsourced support personnel have even less incentive to care. The entire google forums read like passing the buck.

> Google has very little incentive to fix the problem

A long time ago, in an internet far, far away, Gmail was brand new. The big feature? No spam. Back then we'd hide our email addresses in cryptic text and images. It was a private thing, shared between friends. If the light of the internet were to ever shine upon your unobfuscated email address, woe be onto you as the plague of SPAM descended. There were even entire websites dedicate to the purpose of "email address images". It was ... a wild time.

Then, GMAIL! For the first time since the dawn of SPAM we could post our addresses in plaintext, in the light of day. We didn't hide them like dirty underwear. The whole WORLD could see our email addresses, and we didn't have a care in the world. The smell of fresh email was in the air, unbesmirched by SPAM.

Perhaps the young ones forget. Perhaps Google has forgotten. Lost to the sands of Calendar spam...

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#233

Post by malux85 »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #219
o-__-o wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every one person who vows to never purchase their product, 10 others become useful leads.

Yes, but for every person I tell that they had a data breach causing them to phish their customers through calendar, I can poison 50 people in each organization, then they can poison 50 and so forth... let's call it exponential growth of the DELL-20 coronavirus.

And each of those 10 successes tells 50,

Don’t you get it?! They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work, and you are vastly outnumbered. It’s not right, it’s bloody annoying, but it’s there and it’s not going away.

Google needs to fix the root problem, so that the spammy behaviour is not possible.

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#234

Post by zrobotics »

jiggawatts wrote: post #229
cbo100 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same on the Apple discussion boards. You won't ever get an official answer, only a guess of an answer from somebody with no more knowledge than yourself. HP is the same, but occasionally you will get an employee answer, but it will be just as useless. My assumption is all the big tech companies don't want to give support away for free when you should be paying for a support contract for it. And yes, there is…

Big-vendor hardware: Sure it costs 1.5-2.0x as much as white-box equipment, but you're paying for the support! ... later... "Can I get that support that I paid double for?" "Oh no, for that you need enterprise support, that's extra!"

Honestly, that last line reads exactly like something from BOFH[0], right before he gets the PFY to commit some heinous act of domestic terrorism on the unsuspecting enterprise support salesman. Some things apparently never change.

[0]https://www.theregister.com/data_centre/bofh/

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#235

Post by [deleted] »

JonathonW wrote: post #159
cbo100 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same on the Apple discussion boards. You won't ever get an official answer, only a guess of an answer from somebody with no more knowledge than yourself. HP is the same, but occasionally you will get an employee answer, but it will be just as useless. My assumption is all the big tech companies don't want to give support away for free when you should be paying for a support contract for it. And yes, there is…

Apple's discussion boards are useless, but at least they have actual phone and email channels to get an answer from an employee (usually). And Apple doesn't generally charge for the phone call itself (they will charge for out-of-warranty hardware work, but generally don't for software support even out of warranty). With Google, more often than not, community "support" through their forums is the only option. Where of…

[deleted]

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#236

Post by jiggawatts »

ramosu wrote: post #22

It seems Google simply abandon some of their products. I've been living with another issue since 2011: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/35889152

> "9 years with this. This is beyond absurd and stupid. The way it is done now allows a complete stranger to fill my Firebase dashboard with 100 projects and I'm completely helpless. WTF"

Wow.

When people say that Google "doesn't seem to give a shit" about their users, this is what they mean.

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#237

Post by manigandham »

zymhan wrote: post #231
manigandham wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a UI thing. It's a general recommendation about workflows because folders are usually easier to manage than files. Have you tried using Google Groups? Add them to a single "external associates" group and then you can just edit group membership in the future instead of managing files.

You need the ability to verify that no files are shared with them. "Adhering to a workflow" isn't sufficient.

The other person commented that the UI didn't suggest using folders over files. Why would it? That's up to your specific workflow, and using folders or groups is general advice for bigger organizations.

How you verify access is something else entirely, but the same advice helps in that case too.

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#238

Post by reaperducer »

rpeden wrote: post #217
dreamcompiler wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It boggles the mind why a sales person would do something that is likely to be seen as an invasion to the prospect. Sales droids don't think the same way regular people do. A lot of them really believe everybody is as extroverted as they are and introverts are just pretending. And that everybody would be as excited about their product as they are, if they only knew about it. The best sales people can adopt the poin…

That really hasn’t been my experience when working alongside sales people at the companies I’ve worked for. I definitely wouldn’t call any of them sales droids. Usually they’re just given really tough goals and quotas to hit. And while none of the salespeople I’ve worked with would book unsolicited appointments, I could see it happening at companies who don’t have a very mature sales org and just throw their account…

That really hasn’t been my experience when working alongside sales people at the companies I’ve worked for.

I'll outweigh your anecdote with mine, because the only two companies where I had to work with sales people, in both places the sales people were exactly as the parent described.

One cheated on his bride-to-be just to make a sale.

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#239

Post by reaperducer »

kstrauser wrote: post #60
erichurkman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's used not just by spammers, but by sales reps, too. Dell recently did this to about half a dozen people on my team. 'Q2 Budget Review', which sounds official, but is really a Dell rep trying to sell you junk that magically pops up on your calendar _even if you mark their message as spam_. Dirty way to get by executive assistants, too.

That sounds like an excellent way to make me ban all inbound traffic from that vendor.

It's going directly from the vendor to Google. How exactly would you block that traffic?

Re: Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me?

#240

Post by reaperducer »

scubbo wrote: post #218
toss1 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another lovely Google feature that lasted for about 10sec. after I discovered it: Booked a flight, got the receipt through Gmail. Google then auto-populated my calendar with the flights - fine. They also populated it with a hotel reservation, and a link saying I hadn't yet confirmed the reservation for Hilton. I was going to stay with family, w/no intention of staying in a hotel. I couldn't believe the blatant hijack…

YMMV, but I personally think that's a reasonable level of intrusion. I'd prefer less; but for the convenience of "auto-populated calendar events", I'm willing to swallow a little unobtrusive upselling for a very justifiable assumption ("person who is travelling _probably_ wants a hotel").

Having Google put fake hotel reservation confirmation links in your calendar is a "reasonable level of intrusion?" It's amazing what we've become conditioned to.
Post reply on HN