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.
Google Photos fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it, anti-libre software.
What did you expect? LMAOO
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.
google photos goes omnom
Use /e/OS officially supported on fair phone 5
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.
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”.
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.
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:
If you disable Google photos storage access you don’t even have a camera roll :/
That’s how embedded the damn thing is
Yes, and they and apple keep saying it’s all done locally. Because trust me bro!
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.
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
Additional tip: You can use the universal android debloater tool to remove built in apps on your phone.
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