Security

Okay, so we all need to feel secure on the internet, and for a good portion of us, we've all been taught the quasi-accurate lesson:

"Once something's on the internet, it's there FOREVER and you can NEVER get it back, and there's NO way to keep EVERYBODY from seeing it."

Let's take a moment here to digest.  True, once somebody is given access to a website, they could have saved it, copied everything you had, saved an image, wrote down you're secret recipe.

Scary, huh?  And then there's Google Drive.  You certainly don't want your deepest poetry to be stolen before you snag a copyright, and (more practically) don't want want to have students have access to the test.  Yes, it's on the internet, but what does that mean in this case?

To put it simply, it's not public.  All of your grades?  You can't just type that into an address bar and pull them up.  The same is with your files.  Every file in Google Drive is given a unique and incredibly long URL (completely random and impossible to guess).  If someone types that URL in, they will be prompted to sign in.  There's no way they can just get your documents.

When you get an email stating that somebody has shared a document with you, it is true that you click on a link, but if they're not already signed in, Google politely asks you to do so.  After signing in, Google verifies that this account has access to the document and then opens it.  If you decide to forward that email (with the URL), and somebody else clicks it, they are still taken to the sign in page, and will be denied access.

When you give somebody permission to edit, you can also give them permission to invite other collaborators.  This means that in effect, once you share a document for the first time, there can be collaborators that you don't know.  ONLY THE OWNER is allowed to decide if editors can invite others, and the owner can always revoke access and use revision history to restore the document.

One last thing:  If somebody does not have a Google account, besides forcing them into our future, you do have the option of sending a link and not making them sign in.  This is where the element of trust plays in: they can forward the email and anybody who gets it will be able to access that file.

Seems complicated?  It really isn't.  In review:

• Private documents stay private.  Period.
• Shared documents are only shared with the people you share them.  
• If you choose, those people can invite others.
• You always have the ability to revoke access, change settings, viewing rights, etc.
• Finally, if the person you want to share a file with doesn't have a Google account, they will be prompted to create one under that email address, or you can make the document visible to people without signing in.  It's called "anybody with the link can access"