Incident Report

Summary:

Starting on Thursday, 18 July 2022, a subset of EDU users with an under-18 age setting were unable to access Drive using their iOS application for a period of 11 days, 7 hours. Subsequently, starting on Tuesday, 26 July 2022, a subset of EDU users with an under-18 age setting were also unable to access Gmail using their iOS application, for a period of 3 days, 5 hours.

We apologize for the impact this service disruption had on your organization. We have completed an internal investigation and are taking immediate steps to improve the quality and reliability of our services.

Root Cause:

Google engineers identified the root cause as a recent application update made to our Gmail and Drive iOS applications. Google regularly releases updates to improve performance and security of our applications. This particular update was designed to enhance security to the application.

A recent application update introduced an unintentional change that blocked EDU users with an under-18 age setting, resulting in the affected users to be logged out and received an error message stating: “You don’t have access to this service. To request access, contact the administrator for your organization’s Google services.”

Remediation and Prevention:

On Thursday, 21 July 16:51 US/Pacific, Google was alerted to an issue impacting all users meeting the criteria (under-18 EDU) who had the affected versions of our Drive iOS applications installed. On Tuesday, 26 July, 19:06 US/Pacific, Google was alerted to an issue impacting all users meeting the criteria (under-18 EDU) who had the affected versions of our Gmail iOS applications installed.

On Thursday 28 July 23:59, Google engineers identified the application updates which caused the issue and subsequently submitted and received approval on an updated version of the iOS applications. The applications were automatically updated for most Drive users, restoring access. Gmail users could restore access by manually installing the update. This fix resolved the issue for all affected users on 29 July 2022 17:00 US/Pacific.

Google is committed to preventing future recurrence, and we are taking the following actions:

• Deploy additional testing to verify mobile application functionality for restrictive user settings before rolling out updates.
• Improve alert monitoring to capture mobile application login issues.
• Deploy additional error handling to prevent our mobile applications from blocking user access and ensure continuity of service.

We appreciate your patience and apologize again for the impact to your organization. We thank you for your business.

Detailed Description of Impact:

Google Drive Impact

From Thursday, 2022 18 July 2022 10:00 US/Pacific to Friday 2022, 29 July 2022 17:00 US/Pacific. 1.8% of all Drive iOS users received an error stating: “You don’t have access to this service. To request access, contact the administrator for your organization’s Google services.” This impacted only EDU users with an under-18 age setting with the affected application version.

Gmail Impact

From Tuesday, 26 July 2022 12:00 US/Pacific to Friday 2022, 29 July 2022 17:00 US/Pacific. 0.17% of all Gmail iOS users received an error stating: “You don’t have access to this service. To request access, contact the administrator for your organization’s Google services.” This impacted only EDU users with an under-18 age setting with the affected application version.

As a workaround, affected iOS users could use the Gmail/Drive web UI on their desktop or mobile to access their accounts. Our Android Gmail/Drive applications were not affected.

Mini Incident Report (Preliminary)

We apologize for the inconvenience this service disruption/outage may have caused. We would like to provide some information about this incident below. Please note, this information is based on our best knowledge at the time of posting and is subject to change as our investigation continues. If you have experienced impact outside of what is listed below, please reach out to Google Workspace Support using help article https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213.

(All Times US/Pacific)

Incident Start: 18 July 2022 10:00

Incident End: 29 July 2022 17:00

Duration: 11 days 7 hours

Affected Services and Features:

Google Drive, Gmail

Regions/Zones: Global

Description:

A subset of Workspace EDU users experienced issues accessing their Drive and Gmail accounts via Google IOS apps. The root cause was identified as a recent Gmail and Drive app update that introduced an unintentional check that blocked access for under-18 EDU users who had an affected version of the app.

Customer Impact:

Affected users observed an error stating "You don't have access to this service. To request access, contact the administrator for your organization's Google services."

Additional details: Web and Android users were not affected.