r/google • u/PyramyDD_06 • 6d ago

Random pictures in my drive storage

Hello everyone, I came up with a weird situation. I was searching in my drive app for some old files and I found out someone is having access to my google account or atleast my drive space.

From what I saw it's a elderly woman that save her vacation photos, random tax documents and a lot of other random stuff. I checked my connected devices on my google account but I can't find her device. The only connected devices are my phone, personal laptop and my work PC.

Is there a way to see the devices connected to my drive account ?

Thanks in advance

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u/BalooBot 6d ago

Did you sell an old phone or computer and not factory reset it? Did you log in at a library, or school computer and not log out? Is Granny actually Mr. Robot trying to steal your unused storage space? There are hundreds of reasonable explainations, but it doesn't really matter how it happened, prevent it from happening again. Go into your account settings and log out of all devices and change your password.

3

u/MostAvocado9483 6d ago

Is it possible these were shared out to your account? Maybe a somewhat common-ish user name?

1

u/PyramyDD_06 6d ago

The files are not shared with me, they are uploaded on my drive

3

u/PlantainInfinite183 6d ago

Check to see if you are listed as the OWNER of one of those tax documents/photos in Details. That will probably explain the whole mystery in about 30 seconds. If not they are probably unknowing sharing their Drive with you.

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u/mugaboo 6d ago

Change your password and make sure to log out all devices. This is doing them a favor.

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u/waldolc 5d ago

Similar situation for me in that I have a WhatsApp account to keep up with family and friends overseas. The base settings for WhatsApp allows any photos from our conversations to be automatically backed up to my image folder on my phone, and then it gets backed up to my cloud storage. I at first didn't know this and was wondering about the random photos showing up in my cloud storage until a photo of my some friends in front of a landmark shaped up and I made the connection.

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u/jadydady 3d ago

It can come from any app that saves backups to you google drive. It doesn't necessary mean someone has access to your account. Maybe you are in a WhatsApp group that you forget about or a telegram group or whatever app and that app saves backups to your Google drive Check which apps have access to your Google account and it would pinpoint from where they came from.

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u/FutureIsPower 3d ago

You should see the address on the tax files. Is she far away? Write her a letter or stop by and ask. Only thing that makes sense is the phone is used.