Privacy

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Google Photos app uploaded all my locally saved pictures completely against my will (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by RealM__@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

114 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've gotten a new phone and setting it up for the past few days - a Fairphone 5 with Android installed. So obviously, this means I can't escape Googles clutches. Sure, whatever.

I have been VERY adamant about pressing "No" on all prompts, that try to get me to try something out or use some dumb service. I do not want any AI tool or similar to go through my files.

Yet, while perousing the depths of my system settings, I realized Google Photos was using a suspicous amount of storage. Somehow, it had "synchronized" ALL my locally saved pictures - this included pictures of my vacations, my drivers license, private pictures I would have rather not shared, and so on...

And while checking the Google Photos App for the damage done, obviously it had already automatically generated "previews" and "albums" for me, neatly organized.

IT HAD AUTOMATICALLY ANALYSED MY DRIVERS LICENSE AND SAVED IT INTO AN ALBUM CALLED "Identity-related"

How the fuck is this legal? I am so mad at myself right now. I'm usually so fuckin cautious about denying any sort of pop-up and setting all settings as strictly as possible.

So obviously I just had to spent 2 hours figuring out how to turn this "synchronization" off, and how to delete all photos in google photos - spoiler alert: There is no "Delete All" button. You have to manually select every single fucking image.

Sorry for the rant, I hope it's not too off-topic. I'm just so mad right now.

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[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I was gonna say something about postmarketOS, but it's not ready yet. Mobian is also not ready for it either.

So next best option if you really wanna get rid of this type of stuff is either rooting your device to remove what you don't need or flashing something like GrapheneOS or a different OS.

But I'd consider that a last resort if you already have everything set up just right and have things you don't wanna lose and can't backup easily. That, and if it's a work related device, you're screwed.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Just buy your next phone from iode. It's preinstalled.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 1 points 16 hours ago

I'll have to look into them and see what's what.

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

And https://sailfishos.org/ is.. what it is.