Skip to main content

How to stop Google Androids SafetyCore feature from scanning your photos

A hand holds digital lens icon in the center and circuit board with vibrant data transfers

A new Google app automatically installed on Androids has users outraged about the invasion of privacy, but don't worry, it can be uninstalled.

ZDNET, which first picked up on the chatter online, reports that the app SafetyCore, designed to protect sensitive content on users' phones, also scans their entire photo gallery. The tool was introduced in October as part of its latest system update and has been gradually rolling out to users, which is why they have begun to notice it now. 

The feature in question on the app is called Sensitive Content Warnings for Google Messages. It's an "optional feature that blurs images that may contain nudity before viewing, and then prompts with a 'speed bump' that contains help-finding resources and options, including to view the content," according to a description in the Google Security blog.

"When the feature is enabled, and an image that may contain nudity is about to be sent or forwarded, it also provides a speed bump to remind users of the risks of sending nude imagery and preventing accidental shares."

However, for the feature to scan for nudes, it must access the nudes along with the rest of your photos. Google stressed that the scanning only happens on-device, and message contents are end-to-end encrypted. "Sensitive Content Warnings doesn’t allow Google access to the contents of your images, nor does Google know that nudity may have been detected," the description added.

Despite assurances that Sensitive Content Warnings is safe and private, users remain skeptical since Google installed the SafetyCore app without their knowledge, and it runs silently in the background without explicit user consent, so users wouldn't even know that they need to disable or uninstall anything. As one Redditor said, "Silently installed itself in the background and scans all your data. If you take the name Google out of the equation, this is textbook malware behavior." And the reviews on the Google Play store are similarly scathing.

How to uninstall SafetyCore

Don't worry, you can uninstall SafetyCore. Here's how:

  • Go to Settings > Apps

  • Select "See all apps" and then select "Show system apps" under the three dot menu

  • Scroll to find SafetyCore

  • When you find the app, tap Uninstall. As ZDNET notes, this option may be grayed out, in which case you can only disable it.



from Mashable https://ift.tt/3KV8Q9I
https://ift.tt/e5cNgZY
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When the clocks change for Daylight Saving Time, and why we do it at all

The clocks on our smartphones do something bizarre twice a year: One day in the spring, they jump ahead an hour, and our alarms go off an hour sooner. We wake up bleary-eyed and confused until we remember what just happened. Afterward, "Daylight Saving Time" becomes the norm for about eight months (And yes, it's called "Daylight Saving" not "Daylight Savings." I don't make the rules). Then, in the fall, the opposite happens. Our clocks set themselves back an hour, and we wake up refreshed, if a little uneasy.  Mild chaos ensues at both annual clock changes. What feels like an abrupt and drastic lengthening or shortening of the day causes time itself to seem fictional. Babies and dogs demand that their old sleep and feeding habits remain unchanged. And more consequential effects — for better or worse — may be involved as well (more on which in a minute). Changing our clocks is an all-out attack on our perception of time as an immutable law of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shortcut AI Excel agent could one-shot spreadsheet jobs. Heres how to try it.

There's a new AI agent on the block for people who spend their waking hours inside spreadsheets. Navigate to Shortcut AI's website , and you'll find a page that looks almost exactly like an empty Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The main difference is a sidebar chatbot that can be tasked with taking on the tedious legwork of building, say, complex financial models or competitive analyses. Because Shortcut is agentic , meaning it can handle multi-step tasks on the user's behalf, the tool can do more than just generate Excel formulas or analyze spreadsheet data. In a demo on X, Nico Christie, founder and CEO of the Shortcut AI agent, showed how the tool swapped out the data from a Microsoft distributed cash flow analysis (DCF) for Google data by looking up Google's SEC filings and populating the data in the same template. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Shortcut launched on Monday with a rather ominous tagline: "Try...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mystery Pixel smartphones detailed in code references

The devices also pack 12GB of RAM apiece. Shiba is said to feature a screen with a resolution of 2,268 x 1,080 pixels while Husky could be a bit larger at 2,822 x 1,344 pixels. Given the amount of RAM, however, both would likely qualify as premium devices. from TechSpot https://ift.tt/cefMDJW via
Post a Comment
Read more