Update, 3:20 PM: On Tuesday afternoon Google released an updated statement on the mysterious terms of service violations:

This morning, we made a code push that incorrectly flagged a small percentage of Google Docs as abusive, which caused those documents to be automatically blocked. A fix is in place and all users should have full access to their docs. Protecting users from viruses, malware, and other abusive content is central to user safety. We apologize for the disruption and will put processes in place to prevent this from happening again.

Though it's not clear just how "small" that percentage was or why some users were impacted and others weren't — we've reached out to Google for further clarification — if you were locked out of an important document you should have access again.

Previously:

​On Tuesday morning, Google Docs users were greeted by an unexpected and entirely unpleasant surprise: Google Docs had decided their file was a violation of the site's Terms of Service and frozen access to it. We know because it happened to us here at Digg HQ:

going through the final round of edits on a big feature in google docs, now to take a giant sip of coffee… pic.twitter.com/hv8U6D03wZ — steve rousseau (@steverousseau) October 31, 2017

Based on this Twitter thread started by National Geographic's Rachael Bale, the issue seems to be a bug more than a deliberate attempt of one of the world's most powerful tech companies to lock journalists out of their own work.

Has anyone had @googledocs lock you out of a doc before? My draft of a story about wildlife crime was just frozen for violating their TOS. — Rachael Bale (@Rachael_Bale) October 31, 2017

If you've been locked out of a file, it may bring a small measure of relief to know that, no, it's not just you. Google Docs Twitter account has been fielding a ton of angry inquiries:



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So far, Google hasn't commented beyond the Google Docs Twitter account's repeated assurance that the team is "investigating." It's unclear how widespread the issue is. "We're investigating reports of an issue with Google Docs," Google said in an official statement this afternoon. "We will provide more information when appropriate."

The subtext of all this: Google is probably reading your documents, so if you have something that you'd like to keep from the internet's prying eyes, stay away from Docs:

@googledocs What the hell are you people playing at? Why are you flagging perfectly fine documents as 'inappropriate'? More importantly, why are you even scanning my docs for appropriateness in the first place? — Dan Atkinson 🎃 (@Danbo) October 31, 2017

Back up your files, folks!