Google secretly installs a system that scans your pictures – how you can turn it off
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For those looking for the instructions:
Go to your phone settings – goes to the „Settings” menu of your Android device. Navigate to „Applications” – scrolls the list until you find the „Apps” or „Manage Apps” option. Search „SafetyCore” – in the list of system applications, search for „Android System SafetyCore”. Disable or uninstall the app – depending on your phone model and Android version, you will have the option to disable the app or in some cases even remove it completely. If you can't find this option or your phone doesn't allow uninstalling, you can try restricting the app's permissions to limit its access to your data.
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They probably already got people's data if they ever upload or backup their data to googles cloud or drive
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I heard it reinstalls itself in the next update, so keep that in mind. There is a way to freeze it with another app
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Oddly I don't have it installed.
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Jesus. Just go to the App store, search for Safetycore, and hit uninstall. This isn't rocket surgery.
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Freeze as in keep it from reinstalling? And what app?
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it's no accident that "children" is part of the 14 words. it's the perfect cover for fascists
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wowmy phone had no updates forva while but it was on there
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Everyone must join [email protected]
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We went through this in other posts and these instructions doesn't work on many devices. See this post for instance :
https://lemmy.world/post/26152027
at :
[email protected]
2 Android Spyware ? (SafetyCore and ContactKeys) by Google -
google has been scanning my pictures for years. i can search "butt" and get exactly what i want from my collection immediately
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And here's a potential solution for people who want to remain in control whether this gets installed on their phone:
https://lemmy.world/comment/15344781 -
This has nothing to do with browser.
This is an android thing.
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So, having a local AI that did sanity checks like this ("Hey, are you sure you want to send this picture of your dick to your boss?") isn't a bad thing.
But Google doesn't have the trustworthiness to implement something like this without everyone assuming, based on their past behavior, that it will be misused and a privacy nightmare.
I can just imagine seeinging in the future: Oh, new update, the SafetyCore app now scans your phone with a new black box model and reports any hits to the police (but, don't worry it's just looking for child porn and not anything else*)
*Unless you're in China, or the US, or the EU or one of our other partners. Then it's looking for whatever minority group that the local authorities think need to be arrested this year.
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I didn't see either of them on my Android phone. It doesn't look like they were ever installed to begin with! Maybe because I live in the EU.
Thank god for the EU and GDPR!
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I live in EU and it was installed on my phone.
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I've checked on my girlfriend's phone and strangely enough the SafetyCore was displayed on here phone like any other app plus another app KeyVerifier. She said they appeared like 3 weeks ago...
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Thank you for letting me know. I will monitor if those things get installed on my app without permission.
