Google’s ‘Secret’ Update Scans All Your Photos
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Wouldn’t it be a given that I don’t have an android phone?
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Yep. I'm furious at Mozilla right now. But when the Firefox Phone was in development, they were one of the web's heroes.
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I'm sticking with Gecko for sure. Trying out Waterfox over the weekend on desktop, and Fennec F-Droid on my phone.
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Freezing an app in an non-root fashion doesn't do anything special. It's moved to a different location and is effectively "removed" from a runnable state. The OS shows it as disabled/removed, but the files are still there. Newer versions of android (14+) will recognize applications it thinks are necessary (like this one, from Google) are moved/disabled and will pull a new apk during the upgrade process. It effectively re-installs the app.
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I also reported it as hostile and inappropriate. I am sure Google will do fuck all with that report but I enjoy being petty sometimes
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Oh right, maybe I noticed because of Storage Isolation, that's an app which allows you to restrict folder access of other apps, and it prompts me to select actions for every newly installed app. So it casually prompts me whenever google pushes a new, hidden installation.
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The fact that Google refused to restore his account even after the police that they called said there was no child porn pisses me off to no end. They are officially allowed to close your account for no reason other than they don't like you.
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By upgrade, do you mean OS upgrade?
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the google play services system can silently install and remove apps from your phone
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how do you make sure that you always have the latest aegis backup somewhere else? did you automate uploading it somewhere?
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i believe this application hides in different ways on different devices and maybe it is also different by regions making it even worse to detect and explain to someone else. So, i wouldn't be surprised if you told me you found it in a different way than how it was explained in my comment.
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Jokes on you my phone is so old it hasn't updated in 4 years
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No, antivirus software only looks for matches with known malware and exploits.
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Thanks. Just uninstalled. What a cunts
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It's not installed with OTA, but through Play Services. I use microG and never will have any issue with apps auto-installing.
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You can safely uninstall System Intelligence if you don't need it. My phone has worked fine without it in the past year.
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::: spoiler also in the Forbes article :
Per one tech forum
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https://gbatemp.net/threads/psa-to-all-android-users-google-quietly-installs-spyware-on-android-devices.667542/
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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.
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They were not “suspected” they had to be matches to actual CSAM.
And after that a reduced quality copy was shown to an actual human, not an AI like in Googles case.
So the false positive would slightly inconvenience a human checker for 15 seconds, not get you Swatted or your account closed
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Nope.
A human checker would get a reduced quality copy after multiple CSAM matches. No police was to be called if the human checker didn’t verify a positive match
Your idea of flooding someone with fake matches that are actually cat pics wouldn’t have worked
