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

119 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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[–] Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, next time, make sure you have your settings set correctly - test with a few pictures at first...

I use pCloud, and it works great for my needs. I have deleted everything I had ever uploaded to Google, besides the simplest backup from my mobile phone, so I can easily restore it, if my phone breaks and I need a new one.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Pcloud has a backdoor. By default end to end encryption is off (and it can be turned off again)

[–] Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Oh, do you think there's any solution without a backdoor?

If you are worried, you can use the extra encryption: "pCloud offers an optional encryption service, providing zero-knowledge client-side encryption. Files placed in the Crypto folder are encrypted before leaving the user's device and remain inaccessible even to pCloud. This feature is offered as a paid add-on."

And if you are totally paranoid, then encrypt what you use, yourself.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 1 points 3 hours ago

Yes. Mega and Proton Drive and Tresorit are always client side encrypted. There is no backdoor like pCloud has.