Google’s Unannounced Update Scans All Your Photos—One Click Stops It
Google’s Unannounced Update Scans All Your Photos—One Click Stops It
AI now monitors your photos without warning.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26233189
"Android System SafetyCore’ claims to be a ‘security’ application, but whilst running in the background, it collects call logs, contacts, location, your microphone, and much more making this application ‘spyware’ and a HUGE privacy concern. It is strongly advised to uninstall this program if you can. To do this, navigate to 'Settings’ > 'Apps’, then delete the application."
If you don't want to navigate android settings you can also simply uninstall it from the Play Store https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.safetycore
Additionaly you can install this placeholder app to prevent Google from reinstalling it every time it updates: https://github.com/daboynb/SafetyCore-placeholder
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Finally degoogled as a result. Stupid to treat peoples data like this.
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(Edit: There were two screenshots here, showing wildly different ratings for the app on the DuckDuckGo results page and the Playstore itself. The comment below kindly reminded me that DDG doesn't update in real time. Duh. I apologise for posting too quickly.)
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Ddg obviously hasnt updated it's cache. Safetnet is new. Had a high rating at 4k reviews and the obviously social media misrepresents it and ppl flock to the store to drop 56k+ reviews on something they now misunderstand. So in just a few weeks the rating has changed dramatically and now ddg needs to update the cached review score.
Not that reviews matter for this app.
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Out of date cache makes sense although I don't think I've seen any system app ever above 3 stars (that's why I even checked the Playstore page). Deleting the comment to not further propagate my false assumptions.
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I'll repost my comment from the other post:
For people who have not read the article:
Forbes states that there is no indication that this app can or will "phone home".
Its stated use is for other apps to scan an image they have access to find out what kind of thing it is (known as "classification"). For example, to find out if the picture you've been sent is a dick-pick so the app can blur it.
My understanding is that, if this is implemented correctly (a big 'if') this can be completely safe.
Apps requesting classification could be limited to only classifying files that they already have access to. Remember that android has a concept of "scoped storage" nowadays that let you restrict folder access. If this is the case, well it's no less safe than not having SafetyCore at all. It just saves you space as companies like Signal, WhatsApp etc. no longer need to train and ship their own machine learning models inside their apps, as it becomes a common library / API any app can use.
It could, of course, if implemented incorrectly, allow apps to snoop without asking for file access. I don't know enough to say.
Besides, you think that Google isn't already scanning for things like CSAM? It's been confirmed to be done on platforms like Google Photos well before SafetyCore was introduced, though I've not seen anything about it being done on devices yet (correct me if I'm wrong).
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even if it was completely safe now, it will change in the fututure. Corporations just cant keep their hands to themselves and will saw any branch for short term profit because they will never get any REAL consequences for anything. Before long it would start connecting to internet to "better classify" the images by uploading everything to some server. Likely it will expand to every file eventually so it can "protect" you from whatever their spindoctors come up with.
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Yes like most things this is misunderstood, bandwagoned and thus overblown.
Getting tired of social media. Even Lemmy.
The other one is the Firefox tou update... Not saying it won't eventually be a problem but as of today it's not sending your data to Mozilla. You have time to see how this pans out.
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shit like this is why I run LineageOS on my phone
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"I AM AFRAID I CAN'T DO THAT!!"
