Comment on In North Korea, your phone secretly takes screenshots every 5 minutes for government surveillance

• stebator@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Have you checked what’s in it? Every action and touch is logged with all the details. Many people didn’t even guess that such actions could be logged. It’s like super spyware activity; it’s very creepy. “Google is tracking your every touch on any Android device” - is exactly what it does.

  I first noticed this issue around 2015, and I have been trying to disable it on every Android device since then. However, it re-enables itself from time to time. I have a few Google accounts, and it must be disabled on each one.

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  • dev_null@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    What I’m seeing, is that:

    • it doesn’t log all your touches, but some actions in some apps
    • not on any Android device, but some device categories like smartphones
    • only on those with Google services (no China devices for example)
    • only with a Google account logged in
    • only when that account has that feature turned on

    That’s already very far for every Android device, let alone every touch.

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    • stebator@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      not on any Android device, but some device categories like smartphones

      Hm, are there any categories? I didn’t see any, but maybe they’ve added them already. They log whatever they can. Today it’s smartphones, but tomorrow it could be other devices and other things to be logged and uploaded to Google, like screenshots. The problem is that it’s done behind your back, and many people are unaware of this creepy activity.

      By the way, screenshots are already uploaded if you did not disable the option to automatically upload all photos to the cloud. And we’re discussing North Korea here, LOL.

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      • dev_null@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Equating photo backup, something that needs to be turned on and only uploads media you create, from folders you choose, to North Korean government taking a hidden screenshot of your screen every 5 seconds, is a gigantic stretch.

        Definitely don’t use Google Photos, Google can’t be trusted with your photos. But wow these are completely different things.

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