Google Drive Now Allows Prevention Of Unwanted File Sharing

There are many benefits to online storage. Beyond the obvious, being able to store numerous documents, media and files online and being able to access them from anywhere, there is also the benefit of easily being able to share these files with people you know. Whether they are shared for work or personal reasons, using the Share function on cloud storage options like Google Drive, provide an easy way to send someone files and regardless of how large the file is.

Of course, the downside of being able to share files with people online is that there is nothing stopping them from then sharing the files with other people. As easy as you can share them with someone, they can turn around and share them with someone else. Well, not with Google Drive as Google has today announced the ability to be able to disable those you share files with, from being able to download, share or copy those files.

According to Google, this feature is now available for any document or file which is located in your Google Drive account. Once enabled, the feature will restrict anyone (besides the owner) from being able to print, download or copy the file in question. To activate the feature is quite simple. Next time you are in Drive, right click on any file and hit Share. Once the pop-up window appears, you will see an ‘Advanced’ link in the bottom right corner of the pop-up. Once this link is clicked, the window shown in the image above will be displayed and you will see the option under Owner Settings to “Disable options to download, print and copy for commenters and viewers.” By simply checking this box, the recipient of the file will be restricted from being able to do anything else with the file, except viewing it. The feature is now live, although the Google announcement (source link below) does detail that the feature is only accessible from desktops for now. To clarify, the restriction will work across all devices, but you can only set the permission when sharing via the desktop. To find out more, you can read the full blog posting by hitting the source link below.