There is confirmation from the Google headquarters about the a malfunction within the company's free Google Docs service - the company has confessed that some users of its online word processing service have possibly had their documents, marked down as collaborative items, shared with unauthorized users.

However, the company has also added that the glitch - which was discovered by the company engineers over the weekend, and first posted in the official Docs Help forum - has been fixed.

Noting that only a few users were affected, Google said in a blog posting: "We've identified and fixed a bug where a very small percentage of users shared some of their documents inadvertently."

According to Google representatives, the hiccup affected merely 0.05 percent documents within the system, and the exposure was limited.

Clarifying the effect of the glitch, Google Docs product manager, Jennifer Mazzon, said: "The inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom the document owner, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document. The issue affected so few users because it only could have occurred for a very small percentage of documents, and for those documents only when a specific sequence of user actions took place."

In its email, Google has extended its apology to the affected users - implying that those who have not received any such email are the unaffected lot!