Uninstalling Google's
Photos app doesn't turn off backup sync, meaning photos taken with Android
devices could be saved to the company's cloud storage, even if the user doesn't
intend to store them there, Google acknowledged on Tuesday.
The issue came to light last week, when a BizJournals editor
reported finding hundreds of family photos he had deleted from his phone stored
in Google Photos -- even though he had
uninstalled the Google Photos app.
"Some users have uninstalled the Photos app on Android
without realizing backup as an Android service is still enabled," Google
said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson Katie Watson.
"This is something we are committed to resolving. We are working to make
the messaging clearer as well as provide users who uninstall the Photos app an
easy way to also disable backup."
Right now, users wanting to shut off backup sync will have to do
so manually. To shut down the pipeline between an Android phone and a Google
cloud account, users will have to select the Google Photos option from the
Google Settings menu and then toggle the "Backup" slider to the
"Off" position.
The Discovery
The wide open back door leading from Android to Google Cloud was
discovered by David Arnott, an assistant news editor at BizJournals.
Arnott had been was mulling replacements for the Flickr app, so he
gave Google's Photos app a try for a few days. He then removed the app, but
backup sync just kept on syncing and sharing without his knowledge.
More than a month later, he decided to check out Google Photos one
more time and reinstalled the app. Arnott was stunned to find that hundreds of
photos he'd taken of family members during the interim had been uploaded and
sorted via the company's facial recognition tech.
While no one other than Arnott had access to the cloud-stored
images, he was angry that Google had access to the pictures and potentially
could use them in its data mining efforts. He found a response from a Google
spokesperson disheartening, to say the least.
The backup worked as intended, Arnott was told.
Evil or Nah?
This issue with backup sync seems, at worst, little more than
improper communication on the part of Google, said Daniel Castro, a vice
president at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
"This seems fairly innocuous," he told TechNewsWorld.
"Google said it is going to improve its messaging to users to clear up
this confusion, so it seems reasonable to take it at its word that this was
just a miscommunication."
Google may be ahead of its time on myriad innovations, and its
desire to track the footsteps of users online and offline has led many to
mistrust the company.
Fears over Google's backup sync and the features shutoff valve may
be an extension of anxieties associated with prompts requesting GPS location
data or the sharing of search history to improve the experience of this app or
that one.
Those worries are valid, but so is the tech, Castro observed.
"I suspect there is at least one user out there who would be happy to
discover photos on a lost or stolen phone are still safely backed up."
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