Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital 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

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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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[–] basic_user@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well when trying to install the latest APK (don't have fdroid) I just get a message that it didn't install because my system is not supported?

[–] bloubz@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It works fine from the developer build. Better not use the app signed by F-Droid. Also there are two releases of Aves: Aves Gallery and Aves Gallery Libre

Best experience you'll have is from Accrescent

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

Yikes. There's a reason the barrier to entry in the official store is high.

[–] bloubz@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

What's the point with what I said? The official repo has apps that are not signed by the developer but by this third party (repo mainteners)