Rajasekhar Rajaharia, an independent cybersecurity researcher claims that Google Drive is a thriving place for copyright infringers, hackers, and criminals. This is because the platform is being abused by many to store malware, porn, pirated content, and more, all being indexed on Google Search.
Google Drive is a place for fraudsters
While Google Drive launched with a good intention to let users store their files on the remote cloud, and synchronize them across devices, fraudsters are using it for
malicious purposes. This was reported by Rajasekhar Rajaharia, an Indian cybersecurity researcher, who claims that Google Drive is a thriving place for hackers.
It’s said that the platform was being used by malicious users to store cracked software, pirated content, porn, and other digital assets that shouldn’t be shared. Since the platform is a legitimate one, antivirus software doesn’t judge it so easily, giving the users an edge for transmitting these via Drive.
He claimed that there are “nearly 80% of the movie Drive links being shared are of malware” which has over “20,000 movies links, more than 2,500 software download links, over 2,500 APK (Android Application Package) mobile apps, and more than 1,500 cracked illegal software copies (not all may be pirated).“
What’s worst is that most of this content isn’t shared privately, but open to everyone with a simple search on the internet. Since users often set the file accessing permission open in these cases, these links are searchable in Google Search with relevant keywords.
This makes the internet harmful for the underaged, and for people who’re aren’t having any safety precautions while surfing the web. While he warns users not to leave their links open, and limit to only trusted people, Google on the other hand is doing its job to voluntarily pull out malicious files of found.
Though Google didn’t make any statement on this yet, in its terms of service, it wrote as, “We may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our Program Policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we reasonably believe violates our policies or the law. But that does not necessarily mean that we review content, so please don’t assume that we do.”
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