Yes, this happens. Even if you turn off all the syncing etc, they will shoot an update and all your settings will revert to default. This has happened with my father's phone a lot.

And even if you keep all these settings off, they are still scanning all photos to check for CSAM.

I highly recommend deGoogling your phone. If you cannot install a custom ROM, check out Universal Android Debloater. There are many sources for degoogling your life. Check out c/degoogle on Lemmy (I forgot the instance name, just search for it). ~~Or if you want we have small group on Signal for deGoogling related talks, DM me and I can share the link to join. (Signal does require a phone number to register, but since usernames are a thing your phone number will not be available publicly.)~~ That group link is disabled, but I can share other group links like Linux and FOSS, or other privacy related groups.

Not against your will, you accepted this and more in the TOS of your account. But you can avoid it in the permission settings in your phone.

The second biggest lie in Internet: "I've read the Privacy Policies and Terms of Service" the first one "We respect the privacy of the user".

https://neal.fun/dark-patterns/

Same thing happened to me, and there is a delete all button. Go to Google photos > top right profile pic > backup is off (or whatever it says when it's on) > top right gear > undo backup for this device.

Ya. I'm sorry for you.

Problem is, even if you delete the Images, Google has already scraped them for info on you and used your Google account and phone number to tie it all together to further its data aggregation profile on you.

Use /e/OS officially supported on fair phone 5

Event like this is what got me radicalized

It's kinda a pain to use 'cause so many apps rely on Google services, so those need to be replaced with alternatives, but e/OS is installable and is supported by Fairphone

https://community.e.foundation/t/install-e-os-v2-on-fairphone-5-my-little-guide/58260

If you disable Google photos storage access you don't even have a camera roll :/

That's how embedded the damn thing is

google photos goes omnom

Email their data protection officer and the government. They may get fined hundreds of millions of dollars for this

Have some dic pics that were uploaded that i sent to my gf when we started dating and i'm glad i didn't delete them because now they have to look at my junk every time they decide to go snooping around where they shouldn't.

install e/os:

https://doc.e.foundation/devices/FP5

or:

CalyxOS releases are paused, but when they are back: https://calyxos.org/

Check out Aves Libre on F-Droid

I had to ditch Google Photos app because of my paranoia, about this exact same thing that happened to you.

a Fairphone 5 with Android installed. So obviously, this means I can't escape Googles clutches

If you have a Fairphone then you can escape Google, Fairphones are one of the few phones that support third party ROMs. If they weren't so expensive I would buy one myself.

https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/FP5/

Sorry for your shitty situation.

Try this. No root needed. I'm pretty much google free on FP5 (and others).

https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater

Removes most google apps and services.

Also try not to ever sign into google on your phone directly. Use Aurora Store, DAVX, Thunderbird etc.

Faschist company with a faschist government. Stop asking for legal, take control, go Open Source.

I got sick of GP when they announced AI learning on user photos (or actually that's just the last straw). I use a combination of these two apps now:

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fossify.gallery/

https://f-droid.org/packages/io.ente.photos.fdroid/

If you were using Photos as a photo roll app you need to stay angry at yourself a while longer. That's on you when you should know you cannot trust the G. Don't grant an app permissions to photos and videos that could sync it to the cloud. And as another precaution, don't keep sensitive pictures in the DCIM folder. If I have to take pictures of sensitive documents like that I disable WiFi (sync set up on WiFi only), take the picture, move it to a folder that's never backed up elsewhere on my phone, and then turn WiFi back on.

You are not normal because you care about these things. The normal user doesn't care and that's who they are catering for. I'm not excusing their behavior (I don't like it either) and at the same time you need to be more on your toes.

I'm planning to move to Ente this year when my Google cloud subscription runs out. Not looking forward to the work it entails but to the [paints face blue] FREEDOM!

I was gonna say something about postmarketOS, but it's not ready yet. Mobian is also not ready for it either.

So next best option if you really wanna get rid of this type of stuff is either rooting your device to remove what you don't need or flashing something like GrapheneOS or a different OS.

But I'd consider that a last resort if you already have everything set up just right and have things you don't wanna lose and can't backup easily. That, and if it's a work related device, you're screwed.

I own an Android phone, for a single app I need to have access to. It's a Redmi something. I could not find a way to just uninstall their own 'Gallery' app nor the Google Photos app so I removed their access to any file. I hope this is enough but I don't know that.

I thought Android was all about choice (against iOS, which is my default phone) but this was not very convincing. I may have missed a way to easily uninstall any app, though? I would like to replace them with f-droid alternative apps so there won't be any risk they access the little data I've stored on that phone.

Where's the article to this story?

That all sounds like on-device behavior. You didn't say anything about it actually being uploaded.