We definitely have systems in place so that employees can not just randomly look at customer data, and when it is necessary it is always logged.
Even if we need to debug customer issues we would need a good reason to look at data over just metadata. There are strict requirements for what can go in logs and dashboards also as you can imagine.
> Absent any evidence, I'm inclined to think that they do very little to protect my data.
Well I think the evidence is mostly that people aren't having their personal data leaked by Google employees isn't it?
Are those logs available anywhere? Can users see when Google employees have looked at their data? Have those systems been audited by a third party to ensure they're working properly?
I'm sure most Google employees are good people, but your basically telling everybody to trust you that Google's doing it right, but not providing any evidence to back it up.
I used to work at google too. End users don't get casually notified when someone looks at their data. But there are definitely audit logs inside the company. I worked on a product and you couldn't look at the data without running a special command, logging in with your account and describing what you were doing, and they audited those afterwards (didn't happen too much I guess). Here's an article about someone fired when I worked there https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8003925/Google...
I know of cases in telecoms where a couple of BT workers got 10+ years for conspiracy - provided information to a gangland hitman to murderer someone's parents.
And anecdotally in BT you would hope if you got caught for naughty shit you would rather the Local Police, The Met or The Service caught you instead of the internal security.
For enterprises, yes, with the significant caveat that some types of data look ups cannot be communicated to the customer because they're at the request of the government.
Well, plenty of data gets stolen all the time. Would be tough to trace it necessarily to a Google employee.
But if you say so, anonymous internet user, it must be true. (just kidding, sort of. I appreciate the info. But absent a neutral 3rd party audit, we're all just wishing and hoping.)
Even if we need to debug customer issues we would need a good reason to look at data over just metadata. There are strict requirements for what can go in logs and dashboards also as you can imagine.
> Absent any evidence, I'm inclined to think that they do very little to protect my data.
Well I think the evidence is mostly that people aren't having their personal data leaked by Google employees isn't it?