A pretty serious Android TV bug has caused Google to disable viewing Google Photos on Android TV devices completely.
When using his Android TV-powered Vu LED TV and setting up Backdrop/Ambient Mode with a Pixel 2 XL, Twitter user Prashanth found a long list of accounts complete with names and profile photos for each. He couldn't view these users' photos on his TV, which was running Android 7.0, but being able to see all of these other accounts is still a serious security issue. Prashanth couldn't replicate the bug on a Xiaomi Mi Box with Android 8.0.
That doesn't mean that having an old version of Android is to blame, though, because Twitter user Aarjith ran into the same issue on an iFFalcon TV running Android 8.0.
A couple of days after Prashanth discovered this bug, Google has responded. "We take our users’ privacy extremely seriously," the company told Android Police. "While we investigate this bug, we have disabled the ability to remotely cast via the Google Assistant or view photos from Google Photos on Android TV devices."
Vu Technologies PVT LTD, the manufacturer of Prashanth's television, has confirmed that this bug is not being caused by a Vu TV but instead is related to the Google Home app. "We take your privacy very seriously. Vu has a long-standing commitment to protecting the privacy of the personal information that our customers entrusts to us," Vu said.
Even though these users weren't able to access other peoples' photos, this is still a pretty major bug, and it's possible that eventually someone else might've stumbled upon the issue and would've been able to find a way to access others' private images. The good news is that there doesn't appear to be any word of a nefarious person taking advantage of the bug. Now hopefully Google can get it fixed up fast so that Android TV users can go back to accessing their photos on their TV.