Google users fight for refunds as unauthorized API usage bills soar

EXCLUSIVE Several Google Cloud customers say their API keys have been compromised and used by bad actors to run inferencing workloads using the most expensive video and picture models, leaving them with bills for tens of thousands of dollars and weeks of back-and-forth headaches with the Chocolate Factory as they tried to prove they were not responsible for the mess.

The problem is being hashed out on social media, with sites like Reddit collecting stories from Google Cloud users that seem to follow a similar pattern: After months or years paying small monthly bills to Google Cloud for access to tools like Maps, their API keys are discovered, and in minutes they are charged thousands of dollars for API calls to Nano Banana and Veo 3.

Google told The Register this is an industry-wide problem and not a security issue specific to Google. It said the vast majority of these ...