"Private" Google Calendar events are not so private

August 22, 2023 12:50 PM

My organization's Google Calendars are displaying the details of private events to everyone in the organization. Why? How do I fix it?

I am an admin for my organization's Google Workspace. This is not my main job -- it's something I do in addition to my main job, and it's not my area of expertise. I've noticed an issue with private events on my and others' calendars in our Google Workspace, and I'm hoping y'all can help.

The expected and desired calendar behavior would be:
- By default, calendar events are "default visibility", and event details are visible to everyone within the organization.
- However, if someone marks an event as "private", then only the free/busy status should be visible to everyone within the organization.

INSTEAD, what I'm seeing is this:
- By default, calendar events are "default visibility", and event details are visible to everyone within the organization.
- EVEN IF someone marks an event as "private", the event details are still visible to everyone within the organization.

This is bad -- it's exposing information that shouldn't be exposed. My Googling and poking around in the admin settings and help docs is not yielding results. Everything I've found indicates that marking events as "private" should override the default settings unless other users have "make changes to events" privileges. They don't, as far as I can tell, but they're still seeing private event details. This is affecting multiple people and multiple calendars, not just one.

What gives, and how can I fix it? Thank you!

posted by ourobouros to Technology (5 answers total)

Best answer: Are you sure that everyone can see it? I believe Workspace admins in Google can see private events, but regular users cannot.
posted by kaefer at 2:14 PM on August 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: That's a good point. I've only tested the issue with another Workspace admin so far. I'll try it tomorrow with a non-admin and see. Thanks!
posted by ourobouros at 2:41 PM on August 22, 2023

I hope you'll update with what you learned! I'm a Google Workspace admin-but-not-expert too, as well as a user, and I'm surprised and mildly concerned to hear that admins might be able to see private events, especially without going to extra lengths to specifically invoke admin powers.
posted by likedoomsday at 8:36 PM on August 23, 2023

I used to administer email (on a mainframe but that doesn't affect this situation) - I always found it helpful to have a "Joe User" account to log into, to test these kinds of things. You might want a "Bob User" too, so Joe can create something and you can have Bob look at it. Be sure to clear these two users with your audit team if you need to, or at least document who "owns" the account; also be sure to keep those passwords private, don't share them with other admins (sharing passwords usually violates some policy or law)
posted by TimHare at 9:44 PM on August 23, 2023

Response by poster: kaefer had it -- it's only Workspace admins who can see private calendar events. I'm still not happy with this and I wish there was a way to toggle it off, but at least it's better than private events being broadcast to the whole organization. Searching for this issue in Google's help documentation confirmed that "This is expected behavior and can't be changed". Thanks -- at least I now know!
posted by ourobouros at 8:44 AM on August 24, 2023