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.

  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.mlBanned
    17·
    1 month ago

    What proof do you have that you in fact pressed no ?

    Also, didn’t you press I agree to anything that gives google indemnity against any of this when you first turned on the phone ?

    I think you would need a complete video recording from fresh firmware wipe to the action you describe happening, to establish it is or isn’t happening.

    Google will have make sure that proving them in the wrong takes a whole lot of effort

  • Lojcs@piefed.socialEnglish
    17·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
    3·
    1 month ago

    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.

      • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
        1·
        1 month ago

        I use the firewall feature to actually stop Photos from accessing the internet, so it doesn’t touch YouTube.

        I use third party YouTube apps to block ads and other crap from YouTube videos.

        On desktop, I believe adguard will block ads on YouTube.com, but I also use third party apps to play videos.

  • AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip
    5·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • Ardens@lemmy.ml
    42·
    1 month ago

    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.

      • Ardens@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 month ago

        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.

      • cole@lemdro.idEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        nice comparison but hilarious to call AOSP not FOSS but the other ones somehow FOSS. do they know where the other ones come from?

  • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
    9·
    1 month ago

    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.

        • basic_user@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 month ago

          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·
            1 month ago

            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

              • bloubz@lemmygrad.ml
                1·
                1 month 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)

    • Quibblekrust@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      I tried that, and I greatly prefer Fossify Gallery. It’s based on the old QuickPic source code. functionality almost identical to the highly regarded QuickPic app.

  • Eternal192@lemmy.dbzer0.comBannedEnglish
    10·
    1 month ago

    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.

  • LordCrom@lemmy.world
    17·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • RealM__@lemmy.worldOP
      61·
      1 month ago

      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.

      • quick_snail@feddit.nl
        8·
        1 month ago

        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.