DeGoogle Yourself

9005 readers

2 users here now

A community for those that would like to get away from Google.

Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!

Rules

Be respectful even in disagreement
No advertising unless it is very relevent and justified. Do not do this excessively.
No low value posts / memes. We or you need to learn, or discuss something.

Related communities

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Google photos question (self.degoogle)

submitted 2 months ago by Debs to c/[email protected]

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi. New parent here. I'm making an honest attempt at preventing Google from building a profile about my baby.

One of the things I've changed is I no longer backup my photos to Google photos. Instead, I use an encrypted cloud storage solution. That being said, I use an android phone. A pixel phone for that matter. I'm worried that Google can still "see" the pictures I take even if I'm not backing them up to Google photos.

What is the consensus on this? Is not backing them up to Google photos making any difference or can Google scan everything on my phone anyway?

top 5 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

If you already have a pixel: Maybe look into Graphene OS. With that, you can completely decouple your child's data from google.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Google could add a feature to their OS to upload all pictures to their servers, but that'd likely violate laws and is easy to detect (unusual network traffic).

Thus it is extremely unlikely they upload your pictures to their servers if you disabled their cloud backup feature.

What's more likely is that they hash your pictures locally, and upload the hash to their servers, like some government proposals want to make them do (to find known CSAM, they say). Or they could track metadata of the pictures (location, date/time). This would be hard to detect and some of the info they likely already have through other features in the OS. Whether they do those things or not I don't know.

This data wouldn't reveal the content of the pictures, so nobody can see your images.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

open camera ☞ https://f-droid.org/packages/net.sourceforge.opencamera/ or https://sourceforge.net/p/opencamera/code

aves libre ☞ https://f-droid.org/packages/deckers.thibault.aves.libre/ or https://github.com/deckerst/aves

fossify gallery ☞ https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fossify.gallery/ or https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Gallery

and you can uninstall google's camera and gallery :)

with open camera you choose what metadata to include. My photographs only have date & time.

aves has built in vaults that prevent other apps or users from accessing your images

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Safest measure, from what I understand, is to completely replace the system for a vanilla one - that is, without any software from Google or related - and then install alternatives unrelated to the datahoarding companies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I guess you could read the TOS of the OS... But I'd think that they wouldn't collect data on photos unless uploaded to Google photos