Why is Google able to access my Trello workspace, which is set on "private"?

Question

We were hiking yesterday, and I pointed out a plant - the "vratjie bliksembos". Someone in the group later asked on our Whatsapp group for the botanical name, and I was dumbstruck to see a screenshot of my Trello Workspace ("Plante plekke") displayed by someone else of the group, who had googled the name.

I googled it myself and voila - could get access to all the pages on that workspace via a google search. Did NOT find my information doing a search on Duck-duck-go though.

I checked my setting on the web version- it is on "private", and found to my horror that the settings on my phone app where I can prevent Google from accessing my apps , has been disabled - by Trello???!!!

I find this situation unacceptable on a new level. How can this be possible?

Would appreciate an explanation, and advice on how to PROPERLY secure my Trello, otherwise I can obviously not keep using it.

Thanks

Michelle

Michael Pryor · Answer

I believe you found some info on cards that you had on a Public board.  You can still make boards that are set to Public in a Private Workspace.

https://help.trello.com/article/789-changing-the-visibility-of-a-board-to-public-private-or-workspace

And after you make the board private, once google has indexed it, they keep the info in their cache unless you ask them to delete it.  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7041154?hl=en

Note that making a board public requires a double confirmation and also the board always displays a banner at the top telling you that it is Public.

Also Trello NEVER makes our users content public.  All boards are private by default.

Michelle Pietersen · Answer

Hi @G subramanyam , thanks for the reply.

I generally have the strictest privacy settings I can function with, and may have inadvertently given permission to share info. I went through my Google and Trello settings again, but couldn't find any permissions that I can turn off or disable.

The setting on Trello itself (one would think) would disallow any other permissions to override it, unless this (the Trello setting) is changed,

I work mostly from my phone, and the phone app doesn't even have a privacy option - one would imagine it will be the same as the web version.

I'll keep looking.....

G subramanyam · Answer

Hi @Michelle Pietersen welcome to the Atlassian community.

That's really weird to have the data publicly available with a "private" setting. I believe, you should be reaching out to Google support to understand if you have given any permission to one of the apps that which has Trello control!! e.g., Google G suite integration OR Trello integration with your Gmail OR Google plugin to Trello board etc.

If you found an answer, do post on this thread for every one's benefit.

Stay safe and stay healthy.