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.
Not against your will, you accepted this and more in the TOS of your account. But you can avoid it in the permission settings in your phone.
The second biggest lie in Internet: “I’ve read the Privacy Policies and Terms of Service” the first one “We respect the privacy of the user”.
https://neal.fun/dark-patterns/
It’s still probably illegal (violation of GDPR). They can’t hide that shit in a ToS without it being off by default.
That is the point, not a big deal to block this in the EU, due to the GDPR, but for users in the US it’s sadly different, there Google can almost do what it want.
Just change your locale to EU. Boom, they follow GDPR (or suffer massive legal and financial consequences, if not)
That is the point, or change direct o EU alternatives to store your photos and data, eg. Filen, 10 GB for free, client-side encrypted, no-knowledge, redundant storing, OpenSource, selfhosteable. All servers are located in Tier III-IV, ISO 27001-certified data centers within Germany.
The lesson here is don’t deal with rapists if you care not to get raped.
This is the stage of priavcy in 2025 folks.
It is victims obligation to avoid the rapist and if it rapes youz it is your fault