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.
Ya. I’m sorry for you.
Problem is, even if you delete the Images, Google has already scraped them for info on you and used your Google account and phone number to tie it all together to further its data aggregation profile on you.
Sorry for your shitty situation.
Try this. No root needed. I’m pretty much google free on FP5 (and others).
https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater
Removes most google apps and services.
Also try not to ever sign into google on your phone directly. Use Aurora Store, DAVX, Thunderbird etc.
I disabled the gallery and downloaded a different one.
Yes, and they and apple keep saying it’s all done locally. Because trust me bro!
I’m sorry. There’s really no way to undo this. Grieving and and moving on is the only option, and I am not being sarcastic. If my privacy was violated like that by google, I would be very upset and would grieve. Even if you complain, they won’t remove it from AI training or whatever they intend to do, even if they lie and say they will. Librem 5’s have no google in them if you want to switch to something else. FuriLabs also make a Debian smartphone.
fairphones can also run custom roms. with calyxos the bootloader can even be relocked for security, it’s done by the installer. that way google services are optional
Email their data protection officer and the government. They may get fined hundreds of millions of dollars for this
Lol. Yeah and trump will get prosecuted for raping minors.
We’re talking about the EU, not some fascist country in America
Oh I’m sorry. What I meant to say was that Tony Blair will be prosecuted for war crimes
You must be new around here lol
Exactly. Luigi #2 is the only way to even temporarily stop this.
You must not read the news?
U is naive
Event like this is what got me radicalized
deleted by creator
google photos goes omnom
It’s kinda a pain to use 'cause so many apps rely on Google services, so those need to be replaced with alternatives, but e/OS is installable and is supported by Fairphone
https://community.e.foundation/t/install-e-os-v2-on-fairphone-5-my-little-guide/58260
I feel for you.
training ai on your photo’s without even asking. wankers
I have just copied my elderly friends 2000 photos from google photos to my desktop, then deleted all of them from her phone. Had to do it with my browser, they only allow you to delete 30 photos at a time on the phone. tossers.
Installed droid-ify, installed lawnchair, fossify gallery, fossify messages, fossify contacts. perfect.
imported her photos back on to her phone:
Intentionally painful but its done.
bring on ADB, I have deleted everything with a G in it.
first one: I wrote a simple little bash script for these:
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.android.chrome
okgoogle, xgoogle, Gmail, calender, Calendar Sync, videos, googlequicksearchbox, youtube, music, Google Contacts Sync, googleassistant, Google Digital Well Being App, Google Duo, Google Pay, google photos and Google Drive with adb so its doesnt happen again.
This poor women is 84, WTF does she know about modern tech, google are tossers
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I would get rid of fairphone rom and install another rom:
unlock your bootloader. easy guide from Fairphone.
then install lineage or E/os custom rom
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?
Use /e/OS officially supported on fair phone 5
/e/OS is a good option to regain privacy from Google, but arguably does some things worse in terms of security than stock.
You can find a good comparison here.
For the Fairphone 5, I’d recommend CalyxOS as soon as they’re back from their hiatus. In the meantime, might as well stick with stock.
Where’s the article to this story?
There’s no article - this is something that happened to me personally, today. I needed an outlet and wanted some advice what to do about this, and I’m really happy about the responses I’ve gotten.
Yes, but you’re just screaming into an ephemeral void.
You could actually make google pay for this if you wrote an article about this on substack and then linked to it here.
Google has already paid over a billion dollars for GDPR violations. They do change their behavior as a result of such reporting and legal consequences.
Op should deff fight back but let’s temper the expectations here… Realistically nothing will happen.
But yes it should be documented
Google specially has been fined over a billion dollars. GDPR law suits and financial consequences are very realistic
Sure child
In FY 23-24 google made over $340B I dont think they mind
Of course they mind. Because they changed their behavior. Else, the billion dollar fines would repeat over-and-over.
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”.
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
Have some dic pics that were uploaded that i sent to my gf when we started dating and i’m glad i didn’t delete them because now they have to look at my junk every time they decide to go snooping around where they shouldn’t.
Did they also suck up photos of your gf?
If yes, you’re an asshole for leaking nudes of someone else to a third party.
If no, you’re an asshole because you sent dick pics to someone and they weren’t into it.
Fyi she asked for them and we got married last Friday after 5,5 years together and she sent me a few pics which i didn’t keep or download on my end but it was over WhatsApp so they are already in the system asshole.
Yeah man, you gotta use SimpleX or Wire or something safer than WhatsApp for nudes.
We use Signal at the moment, we haven’t used WhatsApp between us at least for almost 5 years.
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