Google Docs accidentally locked people out for violating the ToS

Google Docs has become an important tool in the age of always online collaboration and cloud storage, so it was very disconcerting when some users began reporting this morning that they were unable to access their documents because they were “violating the terms of service.”

Here’s a quick example of the screen some people saw when trying to access their stuff.

To their credit, Google quickly realized the error when everyone began complaining on Twitter and Facebook and issued a fix. According to them, “we made a code push that incorrectly flagged a small percentage of Google Docs as abusive, which caused those documents to be automatically blocked.”

Google says that a fix is in place and that people who were previously having trouble accessing their documents should be able to see them now. They apologized to those who were affected by the bug and said they’re working on keeping it from happening again. However, it’s a pretty stunning reality check that everything you have stored online isn’t really yours.