Google photos privacy

[abdchemist84]

After i have signed out my google account on my note 3 device i found that both google photos and google keep still showing my photos and notes...
how come this as aprivacy issue

 

[svim]

Not quite sure what you're query is about. You can sign in and log out of your Google account whenever necessary at will, but until you actually delete specific items or delete your online account entirely your data will still be there. It's not a privacy matter, it's an issue of managing your Google account.

 

[abdchemist84]

Not quite sure what you're query is about. You can sign in and log out of your Google account whenever necessary at will, but until you actually delete specific items or delete your online account entirely your data will still be there. It's not a privacy matter, it's an issue of managing your Google account.

I was testing the following:
if i lost my phone then i used the sign out from android manager, still google photos is showing my pics.. did u get it

 

[Hadron]

Do you mean that you can still see them on the phone, or still see them on the web?

If the web, then as said above signing out on the phone doesn't delete them from Google's servers (and I don't think you'd really want it to - you'd lose your backup, including any that had been removed from the phone after backing up).

If the phone, which I think is what you mean, that's because they are physically stored on the phone, and hence any gallery app (or file browser) on the phone can look at them. It doesn't need to be connected to your Google account unless you want to look at photos that have been deleted from the device and only exist in the cloud backup. So signing one particular gallery app (Google Photos) out from your cloud account doesn't make photos on the device inaccessible.

If you want to ensure that someone finding your phone can't look at your photos, and don't trust your password to keep them out of the device, then the solution is the same as it would be for any other data on the phone: remote wipe the device.

 

[abdchemist84]

Do you mean that you can still see them on the phone, or still see them on the web?
If the web, then as said above signing out on the phone doesn't delete them from Google's servers (and I don't think you'd really want it to - you'd lose your backup, including any that had been removed from the phone after backing up).
If the phone, that's because they are physically stored on the phone, and any gallery app (or file browser) on the phone can look at them. It doesn't need to be connected to your Google account unless you want to look at photos that have been deleted from the device and only exist in the cloud backup.
If you want to ensure that someone finding your phone can't look at your photos, and don't trust your password to keep them out of the device, then the solution is the same as it would be for any other data on the phone: remote wipe the device.

Thanks for ur feedback
but actually i still see them on the phone after sign out and only in the google photos app not on the gallery.

 

[Hadron]

Google Photos is just a gallery app that has cloud backup capabilities, so I would only expect signing out to stop it seeing things that are only in the cloud.

Now if you are saying that it can still see photos that you know have been removed and only exist in the cloud backup, then either it's signed in again when you started it up or it's got a cache somewhere that you are looking at. Those would be the only explanations I could think of in that case.

 

[abdchemist84]

Google Photos is just a gallery app that has cloud backup capabilities, so I would only expect signing out to stop it seeing things that are only in the cloud.
Now if you are saying that it can still see photos that you know have been removed and only exist in the cloud backup, then either it's signed in again when you started it up or it's got a cache somewhere that you are looking at. Those would be the only explanations I could think of in that case.

how to prevent this

 

[Hadron]

How to prevent what? Photos on the device being accessible to someone who has physical access to the device? Or it accessing photos that are only stored in the cloud? You haven't been completely clear on that point.

The only way prevent access to photos that are on the device is to stop someone getting into the device, so always secure your lock screen with a decent password or PIN. You can use the "Find My Device" app to lock the phone remotely (which will then require your Google password to unlock). And if you don't trust any of that you can use Find My Device to remotely erase it.

You can also install a third-party security app like Cerberus if you prefer - these will do similar things, but may offer some other options.

But if someone has the phone and has got past the lockscreen then by definition they have access to data that are on the phone. And of course if your photos are stored on the SD card and the card is not encrypted then they don't even need to do that: they can just pop the card out and stick it in a card reader, and nothing you do with the phone is relevant after that. But of course encryption means you can't transfer the card to another device. There is always a trade-off between privacy/security and convenience, and you need to decide what the right balance is for you.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

Google is good on Privacy. I trust them.