I lost lots of clients and staff this weekend because of this flaw

[SterlingAbbot]

When adding members to Shared Drives, clients and creatives, there is no way to put Nick Names or hide the confidential email addresses. 

As such, all we are doing is acting like matchmakers. Creatives try to reach out to clients and try to undercut us and there is no way to prevent it.

I spoke to two Customer Service reps and they suggested sharing files and folders with "Anyone" so that email addresses are not disclosed. Its not feasible for the following reasons
1) The material is confidential and cannot be spread on the internet
2) We average 300-800 projects per client. It's not possible to share so many files and folders

Here's an additional kicker: Creatives intentionally submit garbage knowing they have the Client's email address and can always reach out and undercut us.

This past Sunday I lost a lot of clients, creatives, time and money because Google casually broadcasts email addresses.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[SterlingAbbot]

Nobody else has this issue?

Seems like a major shortcoming with having clients/creatives playing in the same sandbox.

[KAM]

@SterlingAbbot I'm sure the technical issue exists for many but why not just implement non-compete agreements for your clients and your subs?  Pretty standard business agreements.  #KAM

[SterlingAbbot]

It's not possible to enforce non-competes with clients and creatives around the globe.

It's not even possible in the US. Anyone that tells you differently is just looking for a card to swipe.

[bill_pier3]

This situation is pertinent only to your employment of Drive for this particular business scenario.  Accounts and email addresses are not private information; rather they are identifying terms for people using the integration features in Workspace services.  To my knowledge, this is by design and working as intended.

[SterlingAbbot]

Broadcasting Client's email address is required to get the job done?

The Drive owner knows exactly who is editing/uploading and NickNames would work perfectly in this scenario.
As in Client #1, Client #2, Josh, David, Sam.

NO logical reason to broadcast the client/creatives private EMAIL ADDRESS and FULL NAMES 


The only thing working as intended here is the payment processing.

[KAM]

I unfortunately agree and in my work, I don't look for technology (or the courts) to enforce contracts and agreements.  If your customers and creatives have no honor, look for better customers/creatives.  Trust is the most important trait! -KAM

[SterlingAbbot]

Even if people are trust worthy, having completed 800+ projects..... and their work declines because they got multiple jobs, thanks to WFH....and you fire them, they will turn around and contact the client.


So much for trust. 

[KAM]

Agreed.  Ratbastards.

[SterlingAbbot]

Billions of $$, Millions of Clients... and I'm the first one to go through this?

Every day business owners are getting screwed because this is not functional. Big businesses don't use this service.

I think Google has been disconnected from what business owners really want and this weekend I found that out the hard way.

[StephenHind]

@SterlingAbbot sorry I'm a bit lost: can you explain how you're adding people to Shared Drives and this shares their email addresses? Only those with the Manager role can see the Members, so are you adding these people as Managers instead of a more appropriate level like Content Managers or Contributors?

Another approach to not reveal email addresses is to share the Drive with a Group so only the group can be seen in the Members and you can then manage the group separately and restrict its member list to only group owners.

[SterlingAbbot]

What are you talking about? You can give people the base level "viewer" permissions and they can still see ALL the email addresses. 

[StephenHind]

@SterlingAbbot 

My partial mistake: yes anyone added as a direct member to the Shared Drive can see the email addresses of other members, so my second suggestion, using Google Groups, will mitigate this issue.

As you can see from this first screenshot I'm signed in with my Steegle account, which is a member of the managers' group: as an indirect member I can see the Shared Drive's Members, but it only shows the groups as the Members of the Shared Drive are only groups:

And this second screenshot shows that I'm signed in with my DrPete account (separate Google Workspace) and it's a member of the users' group, so it too can see the Shared Drive's members, but they are only groups so no personal email addresses visible.

Finally if visit the group with my Steegle account I can see the mmebers as my Steegle account is the Group Owner:

and if I look with my DrPete account I cannot see the members as only Group Owners can see the list of members:

I believe this achieves what you were after: all you need to do is make the groups and add them with the correct membership levels and then just manage the groups instead of managing the Shared Drive Members directly.

[christiannewman]

This would definitely do the trick! One of the greatest benefits of Google Groups!

[SterlingAbbot]

Will try it out today. Thank you!