Question How secure is a Google sheets spreadsheet?

t4d

Member
Nov 17, 2018
53
3
81
Unsure if I am posting in the proper forum, but I am running Windows so I chose this forum...........will repost in a different forum if necessary.
I currently have a LibreOffice spreadsheet with most of my financial information on it. I'm considering converting this to a Google sheets spreadsheet in order to give easy access to my financial advisor. However, I think that the Sheets file would "live" in the cloud and could probably be hacked and make my financial info available to the bad guys.
Am I right to be concerned, or could I use Sheets and take precautions to prevent unwanted persons from accessing my financial spreadsheet?
All advice is appreciated.
 

Chiefcrowe

Diamond Member
Sep 15, 2008
5,056
199
116
All in all I would say it is pretty secure. However, the caveat is that it is majorly dependent on your google account security settings. If you haven't already, you should enable MFA to protect your account against hacking, phishing, etc.

That should help a lot!

You also may be able to password protect it or enable additional security on that file itself but I don't know for sure since I don't really use google sheets.
 
Last edited:

t4d

Member
Nov 17, 2018
53
3
81
OK, thank you.........I am acquainted with 2-step Verification, just simply had not seen reference to it as "MFA".......thank you for the advice
 

Chiefcrowe

Diamond Member
Sep 15, 2008
5,056
199
116
Thanks for posting the clarification, sorry for being unclear with the MFA acronym.

That said I would HIGHLY recommend using an authenticator app for multifactor authentication since it is much more secure than SMS and I like Authy for that.
 

ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
25,134
2,450
126
Once you start inviting others to view Google Docs, your document security is only as good as theirs is. No amount of 2FA or antimalware software is going to save you if the person you shared the document with is using a two-year-old web browser with dodgy plugins and a shared Google password with other accounts.
 
Last edited: