Google Fired 80 Employees For Accessing User’s Data: Leak

According to a confidential document, Google has fired around 80 of its employees for misusing confidential data in the last three years. Particularly explosive: some are said to have taken unauthorized access to user data and distributed it.

Google Sacked Employees Due To Data Abuse

Because of the misuse of their access to tools and data of the company, Google announced a termination for a total of 80 employees in the period from 2018 to 2020. Some of these employees face the serious accusation that they have unauthorized access to Google user or employee data and have continued to use it. The information comes from an internal Google document to which the trade magazine Motherboard had access.

As the authors of the report emphasize, the document provides a rare insight and concrete figures on a subject that is of course very sensitive for big tech giants: “How do the company’s employees use their position to steal, divulge or gain data abuse that they may have access to. ” Similar problems and cases are also known from Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and many other tech companies.

The Insider Details

As the insider further explains, who, according to Motherboard, made the internal documents available on the condition of anonymity, the majority of the layoffs will be in 2020. According to this, Google laid off 36 employees this year. In 86 percent of the cases, “improper handling of confidential information, e.g. the passing on of exclusively internal information to third parties” is the reason for the termination of the employment relationship. In ten percent of the cases, Google was active because of “misuse of systems for accessing user or employee data”. In 2019 the numbers were 26.

A Google spokesman tries to emphasize to Motherboard that the data abuse mentioned mostly relates to company data: “The cases cited mostly relate to inappropriate access or misuse of protected and sensitive company information or intellectual property.”