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Google Photos Uploading Your Pics, Even If You Don't Want It To
New submitter Adekyn writes that, according to David A. Arnott of The Business Journals, the Google Photos app will sync your photos — even after you have deleted the application from your device.
From the article: All I had to do to turn my phone into a stealth Google Photos uploader was to turn on the backup sync, then uninstall the app. Whereas one might reasonably believe uninstalling the app from the phone would stop photos from uploading automatically to Google Photos, the device still does it even in the app’s absence. Since making this discovery, I have re-created the issue multiple times in multiple settings on my Galaxy S5.
I reached out to Google, and after reaching someone on the phone and describing the issue, was told to wait for a comment. Several hours later, I received a terse email that said, “The backup was as intended.” If I want to stop it from happening, I was told I'd have to change settings in Google Play Services.
A video of the process accompanies the article.
I discovered something astounding. I used a remote control to turn the TV on. Then I accidentally stepped on the remote and destroyed it completely. But the TV was still on. I did not understand why the TV was on even after I destroyed the remote. Called their tech support, they said if I wanted the TV to go off, I have to walk all the way to the TV and press on a designated location with some cryptic icon which they called a "switch". Not swipe, not single or double tap, press with a finger and let go, according to their tech support script. They claim this is the intended behavior.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Google Photos is a different application than backup sync. More at 11.
Don't attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by incompetence.
Or maybe backup sync is a different program. No that can't be it at all. ZOMG THE CORPORATIONS ARE OUT TO GET OUR DATAZ!!!!
In this day and age, don't attribute to incompetence that which can be sufficiently explained by malice.
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Don't you ever sleep?
Oh right, you got an app for that. Carry on, then.
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I have a Galaxy S5, and have encountered the same types of problems with the baked-into-the-OS Google services. I have rooted the phone, installed app-ops (useless Google window dressing), and then xposed framework and xprivacy. The level of intrusion and data capture is simply stunning.
The first thing that usually blows people mind is when they visit Google GPS location history page at https://maps.google.com/locati... - even though they weren't aware of it, every move they've made for months has been tracked down to the minute by Google. You can "turn location history off" on that web page, but the GPS is so baked into the OS that this cute web page checkbox is almost guaranteed not stop the continuous GPS gathering. In fact, after blocking location access by GPS, you get a stern warning "enable location services for gps", and the "do not ask again" is greyed out if you do not allow it, you will get nagged regularly.
Your phone is essentially rooted. If it can ring remotely, be located via GPS and be disabled by "find a phone" features, it is not you that has root on the OS. It is the company that can employ that at any time.
The Google intrusion is multifaceted once you start digging in, dozens of different components of the OS that make contact with external servers without documentation. Spending massive time disabling their access to your personal data one by one will usually result in a borked phone. One of those back doors is going to get your data even if you think you turned everything off.
Then we have the Samsung apps that are in full intrusion mode. The health app? Wants your contacts and location. The keyboard software? Wants your contacts and location.
It is of course impossible to use these devices without your entire contact list, phone and text engagement, password list, etc, being scarfed up and sent to the cloud. Any single OS library that has network access can act as a gateway to other components that look like they are otherwise behaving when they access your clipboard, screen, etc.
The biggest problem is not that every aspect of your life is tied together by a corporation, who has recordings of your voice, keystrokes of everything you've typed, pictures of you that are run through facial recognition, etc. It's that this is all going over the wire to a corporation that is too big for one government to reign in. A corporation that has had their internal communications tapped by the NSA. A corporation that "plays ball" with law enforcement by giving them their own handy web portal to data. And of course is all behind one password that can be hacked and cracked on by the entire world of hackers from lawless nation states. Soon coming to a Windows 10 computer near you.
Facebook?
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Well thats just a bunch of horse hockey. If you uninstall an app, it's service related functions should stop.
Backing up your photos isn't a service related function of the photos app, so no problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Deleting the app that you used to change a system-level setting used by other apps should NOT change the setting.
That's a reasonable policy, as long as it is absolutely clear in the app that:
1. it was a system-level setting you were changing,
2. the system would continue to honour that setting independent of the app, and
3. you could subsequently turn the system setting off again by doing X independent of the app.
However, if that wasn't clear, and this setting involves uploading data to Google silently and automatically, then the current behaviour is shady as hell. A device that is recording and/or uploading anything without its user's knowledge, or worse when its user explicitly thinks they have turned that behaviour off, is always a usability and privacy issue, and it is always the software developers' responsibility to fix it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
We're talking Google here - they certainly are incompetent at a range of things, but when it comes to "accidentally" gathering information, they're very competent indeed.
It doesn't mattter what Google began as or what Google was a decade ago.
Any corporate entity with the amount of power that Google has will draw on-board people of a certain mindset. Companies that touch base with the admen become creepy. Read Pohl & Kornbluth's "The Space Merchants" which was written in 1952.
It is not malice or incompetence but a desire make as much money as possible by keeping their actions hidden.
Is there an analogous Windows situation? You uninstall some program but a related service remains active?
Absolutely. Pretty much anything that uses IIS, for example. Uninstall the app, and ISS continues running.
Or you could (at least in the old versions - I don't know what it's like these days) install Outlook without the standard Office apps, and it would give you an option to install Excel/Word/Powerpoint viewers. Uninstall Outlook, and the documents will still open in the viewer.
To me, it seems rather clear that functionality only turned on with the user's consent should not be turned off again without again getting the user's consent.