Google’s ‘Secret’ Update Scans All Your Photos
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My system is set to auto update, and yet it never automatically updates any app. Drives me fucking crazy.
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Google is always 100% lying.
There are too many instances to list and I'm not spending 5 hours collecting examples for you.
They removed don't be evil long time agoWhy check any sources first when you can just blindly rage and assume the worst?
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Gimme Linux phone, I’m ready for it.
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I gave it a run on Ubuntu touch with a fair phone like 8 months ago... It was still pretty rough then.
I remember reading recently that it's gotten better (haven't tried myself so don't hold me to it). I can say that Wayland in general has come a long way since I switched to Linux ~2 years ago
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So is this really just a local AI model? Or is it something bigger? My S25 Ultra has the app but it hasn't used any battery or data.
I mean the grapheneos devs say it is. Are they going to lie.
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it says its only for LLM? as long as they dont try to expand the "privacy" in any case i download alternatives to the browsers anyways.
I'm mostly just frustrated that the best option has now become merely the lesser evil.
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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.”
Great, it'll have to plow through ~30GB of 1080p recordings of darkness and my upstairs neighbors living it up in the AMs. And nothing else.
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::: spoiler also in the Forbes article :
Per one tech forum
(
https://gbatemp.net/threads/psa-to-all-android-users-google-quietly-installs-spyware-on-android-devices.667542/
)
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.
:::
.Yep, I've removed both of those the second they showed up on my phone uninvited. Even as a non-US citizen, with the current state of their government, I definitely don't want any corporate collecting data on myself.
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Per one tech forum this week
Stop spreading misinformation.
If the app did what op is claiming then the EU would have a field day fining google.
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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.”
Thnx for this, just uninstalled it, google are arseholes
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Google is always 100% lying.
There are too many instances to list and I'm not spending 5 hours collecting examples for you.
They removed don't be evil long time agoThey removed don’t be evil long time ago
See, this is why I like proof. If you go to Google's Code of Conduct today, or any other archived version, you can see yourself that it was never removed. Yet everyone believed the clickbait articles claiming so. What happened is they moved it from the header to the footer, clickbait media reported that as "removed" and everyone ran with it, even though anyone can easily see it's not true, and it takes 30 seconds to verify, not even 5 hours.
Years later you are still repeating something that was made up just because you heard it a lot.
Of course Google is absolutely evil and the phrase was always meaningless whether it's there or not, but we can't just make up facts just because it fits our world view.
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To quote the most salient post
The app doesn't provide client-side scanning used to report things to Google or anyone else. It provides on-device machine learning models usable by applications to classify content as being spam, scams, malware, etc. This allows apps to check content locally without sharing it with a service and mark it with warnings for users.
Which is a sorely needed feature to tackle problems like SMS scams
if the cellular carriers were forced to verify that caller-ID (or SMS equivalent) was accurate SMS scams would disappear (or at least be weaker). Google shouldn't have to do the job of the carriers, and if they wanted to implement this anyway they should let the user choose what service they want to perform the task similar to how they let the user choose which "Android system WebView" should be used.
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Per one tech forum this week
Stop spreading misinformation.
graphene folks have a real love for the word misinformation. That's not you under there
, Daniel, is it? -
To quote the most salient post
The app doesn't provide client-side scanning used to report things to Google or anyone else. It provides on-device machine learning models usable by applications to classify content as being spam, scams, malware, etc. This allows apps to check content locally without sharing it with a service and mark it with warnings for users.
Which is a sorely needed feature to tackle problems like SMS scams
Why do you need machine learning for detecting scams?
Is someone in 2025 trying to help you out of the goodness of their heart? No. Move on.
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I mean the grapheneos devs say it is. Are they going to lie.
Yes, absolutely, and regularly, and without shame.
But not usually about technical stuff.
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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.
What's over engineered about it?
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Why are you linking to a known Nazi website?
Because that's where I got the info from first? Grow up
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....this link is about Safety core. Which weather app?
There's another one mentioned in the comments
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Google is always 100% lying.
There are too many instances to list and I'm not spending 5 hours collecting examples for you.
They removed don't be evil long time agoMaybe you should given your closing sentence is incorrect and just bolsters the fact we shouldn't blindly take everything we see at face value
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Why do you need machine learning for detecting scams?
Is someone in 2025 trying to help you out of the goodness of their heart? No. Move on.
If you want to talk money then it is in businesses best interest that money from their users is being used on their products, not being scammed through the use of their products.
Secondly machine learning or algorithms can detect patterns in ways a human can't. In some circles I've read that the programmers themselves can't decipher in the code how the end result is spat out, just that the inputs will guide it. Besides the fact that scammers can circumvent any carefully laid down antispam, antiscam, anti-virus through traditional software, a learning algorithm will be magnitudes harder to bypass. Or easier. Depends on the algorithm
