People who used to have the Google Photos application are saying that their photos are still being uploaded on the Google’s cloud servers after uninstalling the app.
Our data is very precious and fortunately we have some control over the things that we share and where we share them. This is incredibly important when it comes to online, but what if we lose this kind of control?
At the developer conference called Google I/O this year, a huge announcement from the company was that its new application called Google Photos, an image editor, cloud backup service and image gallery was going to provide free and unlimited photo uploads. This function is available for 16-megapixel compressed photos and 1080p HD videos.
And while on the surface this sounds like awesome news and for a lot of people this is a great solution for the constant problem of having to download the storage found on mobile devices on computers or other cloud services. That being said, not all people want the tech giant to have access to videos and pictures on their devices and this is why this brand new problem proved to be such a hassle.
The issue is more of an oddity than a full blown bug as it is linked to how the Android operating system deals with the synchronization of data with an account. When you make an account for the Google Photos backup, the application creates an option amongst the settings for synchronization under the account settings of the user’s. People who use iOS don’t have to worry about this problem as Apple’s operating system works in a different way.
David Arnott from the Nashville Business Journal discovered that pictures aren’t stopped from being uploaded to the cloud backup even after the Google Photos application has been uninstalled. This shows the problems dealing with transparency even from huge companies such as Google. But to be fair, technically, the company had nothing to do with this problem.
Fortunately there is a simple fix that can address this issue:
From the Google Photos settings menu you should disable the “backup & sync” option, or just uninstall the application.
You should go to the Android settings menu and search for the Google account that is associated with your device.
In your account, under the sync settings you should search for “Sync Google Photos” and “Sync Google Photos Backup”. You should also be aware that if you uninstalled the application you won’t be able to find the “Sync Google Photos” option.
You should disable both of these options. This is it. Now your photos won’t be uploaded on Google’s cloud servers.
Image Source: digifloor.com