Took me 3 hours to unsync my old work Google Drive from my personal computer

I switched jobs back in March and thought I had everything cleaned up, but last week I went to upload a photo of my cat from my phone and it ended up in the old company's shared drive somehow. Spent an entire evening digging through Google account permissions and backup settings in Minneapolis traffic noise just to find the toggle that breaks the connection. Has anyone else had ghost syncs hang around way longer than they should?

3 comments

3 Comments

jenkins.reese10d ago

Bet there's a good chance your old employer still has a device management policy that can pull files from your personal machine even after you think you're disconnected lol. Those admin-level permissions in Google Workspace can keep ghost links alive unless an IT guy manually revokes your access from their end. Might be worth asking your old boss to double check their device list is clean.

karen_roberts410d ago

Think @jenkins.reese is making it sound way scarier than it really is though. Most companies have offboarding checklists that automatically wipe those permissions within a few days, and nobody's digging through your old personal files for fun. Isn't it more likely they just disable the account and move on with their lives?

nancythomas10d ago

Wait, wait... "ghost links" are a real thing?? I had no idea those admin permissions could keep files accessible like that after you leave a job. That's honestly terrifying to think about. I always just assumed logging out of my work Google account was enough, but you're saying IT has to manually kill the access from their end? So basically any personal files I ever opened on a work-managed device could still be floating around in their system?