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Google’s ‘Secret’ Update Scans All Your Photos (www.forbes.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

272 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Per one tech forum this week: “Google has quietly installed an app on all Android devices called ‘Android System SafetyCore’. It 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.”

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hope they like all my dick pics

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

Don't worry they won't!

/Burn

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Kind of weird that they are installing this dependency whether you will enable those planned scanning features or not. Here is an article mentioning that future feature Sensitive Content Warnings. It does sound kind of cool, less chance to accidentally send your dick pic to someone I guess.

Sensitive Content Warnings is an optional feature that blurs images that may contain nudity before viewing, and then prompts with a “speed bump” that contains help-finding resources and options, including to view the content. When the feature is enabled, and an image that may contain nudity is about to be sent or forwarded, it also provides a speed bump to remind users of the risks of sending nude imagery and preventing accidental shares.

All of this happens on-device to protect your privacy and keep end-to-end encrypted message content private to only sender and recipient. Sensitive Content Warnings doesn’t allow Google access to the contents of your images, nor does Google know that nudity may have been detected. This feature is opt-in for adults, managed via Android Settings, and is opt-out for users under 18 years of age.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

For those that have issues on Samsung devices: see here if you're getting the "App not installed as package conflicts with an existing package" error :

If you have a Samsung device - uninstall the app also from Knox Secure Folder. Entering to Secure Folder>Settings>Apps

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (3 children)

The countdown to Android's slow and painful death is already ticking for a while.

It has become over-engineered and no longer appealing from a developer's viewpoint.

I still write code for Android because my customers need it - will be needing for a while - but I've stopped writng code for Apple's i-things and I research alternatives for Android. Rolling my own environment with FOSS components on top of Raspbian looks feasible already. On robots and automation, I already use it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

I didn't see it anywhere on my phone but ill look into it more after work. Thanks for the heads up.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (9 children)

Seems to be innocuous, but there's no harm in removing it. Next update, it'll be returned, so the better solution long-term will be (if you're rooted) is to use an application to freeze it, which effectively disables it and it should survive and update. If you delete the app, a new update will put it back.