this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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Privacy
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Yes, this happens. Even if you turn off all the syncing etc, they will shoot an update and all your settings will revert to default. This has happened with my father's phone a lot.
And even if you keep all these settings off, they are still scanning all photos to check for CSAM.
I highly recommend deGoogling your phone. If you cannot install a custom ROM, check out Universal Android Debloater. There are many sources for degoogling your life. Check out c/degoogle on Lemmy (I forgot the instance name, just search for it). ~~Or if you want we have small group on Signal for deGoogling related talks, DM me and I can share the link to join. (Signal does require a phone number to register, but since usernames are a thing your phone number will not be available publicly.)~~ That group link is disabled, but I can share other group links like Linux and FOSS, or other privacy related groups.
There not even checking for CSAM
That would be near impossIble considering the tech. Even on a normal portrait is hard to judge the age on. Let alone fotos with more complex perspectives and only some body parts visible.
What they are doing is using hashes of specific real pictures that the police know are commonly shared.
Theoretically it could catch some careless content consuming offenders. The worst offenders, that produce new material, are beyond the scope.
But also, obvious what google gets is just the hashcodes and not the actual pics. If the police gave google a hash to target for pics of vances bald head or (trans-positive) memes who would know?
There was a news some time ago, that a man was arrested for clicking nude pictures of children, later it was found out that he was sending pictures of his child to a doctor for diagnosis. How did that happen?
I'll link the source if I find it.
Update:
NYTimes - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html
Paywall removed - https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html
I've heard about this too.
That must be some other system indeed.
They don't really provide much information from how the images were actually shared though.
Maybe there is a machine learning algorithm that is trained to detect specific features in a random photo but i cant imagine it being accurate without frequent false possibles.
Could be that if you have a certain amount of “plausible” hits then a google employee has to review them manually and they quickly Judged it wrongly?
Though that technically implies your Private medical picture is now seen and possibly covertly copied by a (rogue) employee.
It’s been well documented.
False positives don’t matter, and there’s no human to talk to when it occurs.
They don't manually review. They just shutdown your account and you can't contact them. See my other comment
False positives are a thing. They do scan all your photos for csam. Poorly.
We know this because of the article during the pandemic when a dude sent a photo of his son's dick to a doctor (it had an infection and the doctor asked to see it). Dude lost access to his entire google account. Lost everything. Emails, files, everything. It wasn't a hash.
I appreciate your comment, replying here for reference, perhaps I'd like to join that signal channel. Being staunchly anti-google I feel I'm on top of things, but my Gmail is used across many of my logins. With the scanning for CSAM issue, many people don't realize that Google installs a hidden app called safetycore, for me it gets reinstalled on every update.
https://allthings.how/what-is-android-system-safetycore-and-why-did-it-appear-on-your-phone-2/
could you DM me this signal group link, please?