Privacy Policy for Access to Google APIs

DVC is using the Google Drive API to make it easier to store files on Google Drive. For more details on how to set it up, refer to how to setup Google Drive.

DVC uses the DVC Application on Google Cloud Platform. (That is the name you will see in a consent screen.) This integration is governed by common policies, recorded here.

Your use of Google APIs with DVC is subject to each API’s respective terms of service. See Google APIs Terms of Service.

Accessing user data

DVC accesses Google resources from the machine where you use DVC. Your machine communicates directly with the Google APIs.

The DVC Application never receives your data or the permission to access your data. The owners of the project can only see anonymous, aggregated information about usage of tokens obtained through its OAuth client, such as which APIs and endpoints are being used.

DVC sends users to https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth for authorization and does not directly access or collect user data used by Google Auth.

Using user data

DVC includes functions that you can execute in order to read or modify your own data (or data shared with you). This can only happen after you provide a token, which requires that you authenticate yourself as a specific Google user and authorize these actions.

DVC can help you get a token by guiding you through the OAuth flow in the browser. There you must consent to allow the DVC Application to operate on your behalf. The OAuth consent screen will describe the scope of what is being authorized e.g. it will name the target API(s) and whether you are authorizing “read only” or “read and write” access.

There are two ways to use DVC with Google Drive without authorizing the DVC Application: bring your own service account token or configure the package to use an OAuth client of your choice. See how to setup Google Drive for more information.

Scopes

userinfo.email scope (view your email address)' userinfo.profile scope (see your personal info. including any personal info you've made publicly available), and openid scope (authenticate using OpenID Connect) are required to be used by Google Auth.

DVC allows you to manage your Google Drive files and therefore the default scopes also include drive (read/write access to your Google Drive) and drive.appdata (manage configuration folder in your Google Drive).

DVC only communicates with Google APIs. No user data is shared with the owners of the DVC GCP Project, DVC, Iterative or any other party.

Storing user data

DVC stores your credentials on your machine, for later reuse by you. Use caution when using Google Drive DVC remotes on shared machines.

By default, OAuth tokens are cached in a global location (e.g. ~/.cache/pydrive2fs on Linux, see details).

Usage in other packages or applications

Do not use an API key or client ID from the DVC Application in an external package or tool. Per the Google User Data Policy, your application must accurately represent itself when authenticating to Google API services.

If you use DVC inside another package or application that executes its own logic — as opposed to code in DVC or by the user — you must communicate this clearly to the user. Do not use credentials from the DVC Application; instead, use credentials associated with your project or user.

Acknowledgments

This document is based on Tidyverse's Privacy policy for packages that access Google APIs.