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.
Faschist company with a faschist government. Stop asking for legal, take control, go Open Source.
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.
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Apple is worse for security, and therefore worse for privacy.
You’re not wrong; people are just tribalistic.
Only thing now evil than Apple is Microsoft.
Apple does the exact same thing
Apple announced plans last year to scan iCloud Photos for known sexually abusive depictions of children, but the rollout was delayed indefinitely after resistance from privacy groups.
That’s from the article. But the article is from 2023 so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s changed.
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Yes.
Check out Aves Libre on F-Droid
I had to ditch Google Photos app because of my paranoia, about this exact same thing that happened to you.
Thanks for the tip. Newest version doesn’t run on graphene though. Second newest does.
Wdym? I am using the latest (1.13.6) on Graphene.
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?
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
Yikes. There’s a reason the barrier to entry in the official store is high.
On Accrescent* would be better
I tried that, and I greatly prefer Fossify Gallery. It’s based on the old QuikPic source code.
is it? I thought it’s based on simple gallery code
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.)
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/
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?
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.
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.
A Google spokeswoman said the company stands by its decisions, even though law enforcement cleared the two men.
They are literally too big to care.
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.
They don’t manually review. They just shutdown your account and you can’t contact them. See my other comment
It’s been well documented.
False positives don’t matter, and there’s no human to talk to when it occurs.
If you disable Google photos storage access you don’t even have a camera roll :/
That’s how embedded the damn thing is
Oh damn really? I was just about to tell OP why didn’t they just delete Google Photos and use something like Aves instead. But if disabling/deleting the app disables camera roll then that’s total bullshit. That should be like lawsuit worthy, I shouldn’t have to use your app to have pictures, especially when that service is doing sneaky uploads.
I just checked,
google photos has permanent access to photos and videos. If you disable the app the camera roll no longer works. I get “activity not found”.
Maybe with a FOSS camera app it might still work? I haven’t tried.
Edit: and that is the only permission which it has ( photos and videos ). Everything else ( location, contacts, … ) is not allowed. But that one permission is auto permanently allowed.
Just don’t install gapps. Its missing by default when you install the OS…
You don’t really need a camera roll. Just use your normal gallery after taking pics.
You can disable Google Photos outright. No need to play with permissions.
install e/os:
https://doc.e.foundation/devices/FP5
or:
CalyxOS releases are paused, but when they are back: https://calyxos.org/
e/os is most likely my next step, especially with Google disabling installing “unverified” third-party apps in 2026.
Bought a FP5 with e/os in mind as a possible upgrade path, I just was too worried to immediately do the full jump.
Yes, I’ve installed e/os on my fairphone 5 and it just works. I even got my banking apps to work.
Hmm… I wonder… does GrapheneOS work on the Fairphone?
They don’t and in their typical style they’ve written a very verbose post or two on why
Huh, link to their explanation?
I don’t but its been posted a couple of times on Mastodon, I assume its on their blog and in their forms too.
The jist is Fairphone doesn’t have the security HW to run it
Would be nice if fairphone was in talks of making sure that adequate hardware will be in next version. That would benefit both projects even if they didn’t offer official support.
I’ll guessing the problem will be the chipset vendor.
The GrapheneOS folks said they are working with an ODM to put out their own phone in the future.
I’m happy with it on my used Pixel 8 Pro but if they offered a phone I’d probably get one
I won an Android phone, for a single app I need to have access to. It’s a Redmi something. I could not find a way to just uninstall their own ‘Gallery’ app nor the Google Photos app so I removed their access to any file. I hope this is enough but I don’t know that.
I thought Android was all about choice (against iOS, which is my default phone) but this was not very convincing. I may have missed a way to easily uninstall any app, though? I would like to replace them with f-droid alternative apps so there won’t be any risk they access the little data I’ve stored on that phone.
It’s a Redmi something.
If it is still using the default OS (HyperOS / MiUI), you can uninstall both the Xiaomi and Google Photos apps. The easiest method nowadays is to install Universal Android Debloater on to your computer (any OS), connect your phone to it, enable USB debugging on the phone, and remove the apps you don’t want.
why not Canta?
Oh that’s nice. No need for the computer then.
Thx, I’ll check that tool. Not an expert, so you know ;)
It has a GUI, and clearly shows what apps can be safely removed versus whst apos are load-bearing.
Update: I tested it, and it seems to be working as expected. Now, I just need to make sure what apps on the phone correspond to those listed since they don’t display the same name and I would not want to remove anything I should not. Thx again ;)
Ah, sorry. On the phone, open Settings and go Apps -> Manage Apps. Then choose an app and click the three dots on the top right. Select App Info, and look under App Name. This is equivalent to what UAD shows.
Does it allow you to remove gapps?
Yes of course.
Edit: Lot of third-party apps rely on Google Play Services, so removing this is not recommended.
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.
Just buy your next phone from iode. It’s preinstalled.
Same thing happened to me, and there is a delete all button. Go to Google photos > top right profile pic > backup is off (or whatever it says when it’s on) > top right gear > undo backup for this device.
If you were using Photos as a photo roll app you need to stay angry at yourself a while longer. That’s on you when you should know you cannot trust the G. Don’t grant an app permissions to photos and videos that could sync it to the cloud. And as another precaution, don’t keep sensitive pictures in the DCIM folder. If I have to take pictures of sensitive documents like that I disable WiFi (sync set up on WiFi only), take the picture, move it to a folder that’s never backed up elsewhere on my phone, and then turn WiFi back on.
You are not normal because you care about these things. The normal user doesn’t care and that’s who they are catering for. I’m not excusing their behavior (I don’t like it either) and at the same time you need to be more on your toes.
I’m planning to move to Ente this year when my Google cloud subscription runs out. Not looking forward to the work it entails but to the [paints face blue] FREEDOM!
does it even request your permission? I mean, isn’t it granted by default? It’s been a long time I factory reset a typic consumer phone brand
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)
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
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I use Adguard and block Google photos from connecting to the internet.
Features like edit video still work, so I’m good. If editing didn’t work, I’d disable it.
Does that block YouTube too?
