Numbers appear to be in violation of Google Drive’s terms of service

Google Drive is one of the most widely used cloud storage solutions in the world, with nearly everyone who has a Google account having used it at some point. However, it, like many other Google services, is occasionally plagued with amusing problems. Today, we learn about the company’s aversion to specific numbers, which is reflected in Drive’s automatic file moderation function.

Bug in Google Drive

According to Dr. Emily Dolson on Twitter, if you upload a text file to your Google Drive account that has a single line with the number “1,” it will be detected and destroyed for violating Drive’s terms of service. Another Twitter user discovered that text files with the digits 173, 285, 304, 500, and 833 will be flagged but not erased, while a few others will be flagged but not deleted.

The baffling question is why are these figures in violation of Google’s terms of service? As amusing as this may look, there appears to be a problem with how Drive searches for copyrighted content. The takedown notifications clearly state that the files removed are in violation of Drive’s Copyright Infringement policy, yet if you even try to view a shared file after it has been taken down, the website will notify you that it was taken down for “legal reasons” and that you cannot appeal the decision.

Maybe someone trademarked a bunch of little files with arbitrary integers at random. It is possible that we will never know. What we do know is that instead of completing its job, an automated legal takedown program is out there eliminating arbitrary text files with numbers.

Before you try to upload your favorite number to Drive, keep in mind that doing so might land you in much more serious problems, as Google may decide to suspend your account due to repeated violations of its terms of service. Google needs to figure this out since getting banned for submitting arbitrary numbers is maybe the lamest basis for a ban possible.