Can a Deleted company gmail account (if recovered) access old files shared with him?

kartikoli

Skilled
I've recently switched job so my old company deleted official gmail account but during these years I've shared many personal documents with that email (company email, now deleted) so I want to know if someone in the company tries to recovers that account will he be able to see the documents that I've shared over the period of time. I am talking about sheets/docs that I am the owner using my personal gmail account? I've checked a sheet that I use on a daily basis and it belong to my personal gmail. I don't see company email that was deleted in the shared people list so if someone reactivate that account will he get access to the sheet that was shared by my personal gmail.
Any ethical company wouldn't do that but I want to be sure than sorry. Please share your experience.
 
Mine is normal google account where as Company account was Workspace since I was in key position so had access to everything using Team drive
 
Wouldn't the company take a backup of the account before deleting it? Normally couple of old companies I had worked took backup of the mail accounts as it had many official communications that they would like to refer at a later stage if need be.
 
I don't mind them using that account for internal purpose but I do mind if they access my personal files that were shared with the account. one of the spreadsheet says last edit was made by deleted user and I know that was me using company account (thats how I can confirm that the account was deleted)
 
You shouldn't be sharing or transferring your personal data to your work/corporate account. Any misuse is actually on you and you cannot blame them. I'm sure this must have been in their IT/Infosec policy yet many employees don't follow this practice.
 
When you delete a workspace gmail account from the admin console, you get an option to backup all the data including email and drive ( that includes all the docs and sheets) and optionally allocate those data to a different gmail account.

Having said that, I don't think anyone should be able to access your docs/sheets as you don't see anyone else in the shared and provided you don't have 'anyone with link can open the doc' enabled in share menu.

Also, you can check versions (from file menu) to see who have been editing the file.

This is too much, but you can have a startup appscript that does something or sends you an email whenever someone opens your docs.

There's gotta be an history somewhere hidden who opened the doc and when. That might give you a clue.
 
Having said that, I don't think anyone should be able to access your docs/sheets as you don't see anyone else in the shared and provided you don't have 'anyone with link can open the doc' enabled in share menu.
The sheet have Restricted sharing option enabled and no one from my known gmail account have access to the sheet. Also checked edit history and last edit by deleted user was made on 19th so it should be good.
Why I am skeptical about this behavior is the shady people that i had to deal before quitting the job. They haven't paid my salary even though CEO himself confirmed on email and assured of payment where as others have already got the payment.
 
The sheet have Restricted sharing option enabled and no one from my known gmail account have access to the sheet. Also checked edit history and last edit by deleted user was made on 19th so it should be good.
Why I am skeptical about this behavior is the shady people that i had to deal before quitting the job. They haven't paid my salary even though CEO himself confirmed on email and assured of payment where as others have already got the payment.
There's one thing you can do to be 100% full proof safe.

You can duplicate the doc/sheet and then delete the original. When you duplicate a doc/sheet, the duplicate gets created with unique doc/sheet id. It'll have it's own history and everything. So everything will be new. It can't be linked to original doc/sheet in any way. No one will ever know that you made a duplicate.

I'll suggest you do the above process in case you are expecting involvement of some shady people. The doc/sheet can be accessed from a third party script (Appscript) without even sharing, if you or someone had given the permission to access the doc/sheet in the past.
 
Last edited:
There's one thing you can do to be 100% full proof safe.

You can duplicate the doc/sheet and then delete the original. When you duplicate a doc/sheet, the duplicate gets created with unique doc/sheet id. It'll have it's own history and everything. So everything will be new. It can't be linked to original doc/sheet in any way. No one will ever know that you made a duplicate.

I'll suggest you do the above process in case you are expecting involvement of some shady people. The doc/sheet can be accessed from a third party script (Appscript) without even sharing, if you or someone had given the permission to access the doc/sheet in the past.
Yes I was thinking about it but wanted to avoid as making duplicate means me and my brother will have to change saved urls of all bookmarks and saved docs. though this looks like a wise thing to do.
 
Back
Top