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.
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.
Email their data protection officer and the government. They may get fined hundreds of millions of dollars for this
You must be new around here lol
Exactly. Luigi #2 is the only way to even temporarily stop this.
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
Event like this is what got me radicalized
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
google photos goes omnom
that’s why i straight up delete proprietary corporate apps now whenever possible, even if i don’t use them.
they WILL do what they want unprompted, then make it difficult to undo.
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
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 that.
We use Signal at the moment, we haven’t used WhatsApp between us at least for almost 5 years.
✊
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.
Pcloud has a backdoor. By default end to end encryption is off (and it can be turned off again)
I got sick of GP when they announced AI learning on user photos (or actually that’s just the last straw). I use a combination of these two apps now:
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.
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.
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
That all sounds like on-device behavior. You didn’t say anything about it actually being uploaded.
I don’t think AI computational happen locally…
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.
