How safe are family pics on google photos.com

[smirking]

Don't know about that. Did you read the conditions that are shared in message 6 above?

Yup, but also pay attention to the part that wasn't bolded.

You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

Telling you that this content belongs to you runs counter to then claiming that you have no right over how it's used by Google.

I'm not a lawyer, but I have launched a few significant user generated content online services, run afoul of copyright law myself, and am also a registered Digital Millenium Copyright Act agent (which just means I'm a contact person who enforces copyright violation takedown notices if a user misbehaves).

That clause looks clearly to me like Google is just performing some CYA and making their use license broad in case they need to invoke it in their own defense. Let's say you post an images publicly to some Google service and it goes trending and appears in a featured section of a Google service where millions of people see it. Someone could actually interpret that photo landing on a homepage as Google making unlicensed use of the photo to promote their own brand and sue them for copyright infringement even though they probably thought they were doing you a favor by featuring your photo.

Even just a corner of a photo appearing as a small thumbnail on a preview page could be interpreted as copyright infringement. The stock photography company Getty Images was infamous for these kind of frivolous lawsuits (though I hear that they've backed away from this tactic in recent years). It's a myth that you get cease and desist communications before someone sends the lawyers after you. Sometimes the lawyers are step 1.

It's entirely possible that they could use that legal statement to completely screw you over, but having been on the side that Google's coming from, I can totally understand why it's written that way. While it potentially gives them power to take advantage of you, its real purpose is to prevent their users from hitting them with frivolous lawsuits.

If you've ever purchased hosting for a website, take a look at the terms of the hosting agreement. It'll contain similar clauses for the same reasons I'm bringing up here.
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Where you might be right is images simply stored on Google's network.

I think that was the situation the OP was asking about. It was a question of whether it's safe to privately store photos using a Google service.

If you post a photo to a public facing service that Google owns, all bets are off, but I hightly doubt they'd go as far as to make blatant unlicensed use of your photos outside the context of how you made them available. I wouldn't find it shocking if they used your photo in a screen grab of an actual page showing a product in advertising, but highly doubt they'd take that same image and put it on a billboard without your permission.

I didn't quite grasp what you were getting at with your Flickr images ending up in Google's Search Index and Google Images. Yeah, I find that exact scenario you brought up to be problematic because I don't like my images being distributed so freely with the bare minimum done to credit me as a source, but that's a different issue than what the OP brought up.

 

[Fishrrman]

My opinion only (and yes, I realize it's old-fashioned).

I don't "trust the cloud". ANYBODY's cloud.
Certainly not google -- probably the worst!

I keep my stuff on physical drives that I control.
And that's about the whole of it...

 

[Alexander.Of.Oz]

Yup, but also pay attention to the part that wasn't bolded.

The section that doesn't say, "we won't scrape your private images or share them in any way we see fit, for any purpose we may have in mind"?

 

[smirking]

The section that doesn't say, "we won't scrape your private images or share them in any way we see fit, for any purpose we may have in mind"?

I just realized that the OP was talking specifically about googlephotos.com. I thought she was talking about putting them for storage on Google Drive.

It might seem like I don't care if they do, but I'm actually very conflicted about how openly Web services are sharing any content I don't keep entirely private, but as long as your keep the images private, I don't see them making them public without your permission. If they're not kept hidden, it wouldn't be surprising if they made it available to search and to 3rd parties through APIs.

I'm just not as alarmed by the legal language because it's fairly typical of many online services that allow you to publish or share your content through them. In most cases that kind of language isn't a prescription of what to expect, but what they want to be immunized against if some odd situation arises.

 

[Alexander.Of.Oz]

I just realized that the OP was talking specifically about googlephotos.com. I thought she was talking about putting them for storage on Google Drive.

I can't actually find any separate terms of service for those two services (google photos and google drive), just the main service agreement, which covers all google services.

Nowhere in googles terms of service do they say they will keep your private images private. They do state that they have the right to use them however they see fit to, but that the intellectual rights will always be yours, for what that's worth! They do also mention that if they use them commercially, they will notify you about it.

 

[smirking]

Nowhere in googles terms of service do they say they will keep your private images private. They do state that they have the right to use them however they see fit to.

Take a look at this clause from a services agreement that I got from a generic contract generator program. It's a typical user agreement for a Web hosting business from around 2010.

User hereby grants to Host a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide right and license during the term of this Agreement to do the following to the extent necessary in the performance of Services: (a) digitize, convert, install, upload, select, order, arrange, compile, combine, synchronize, use, reproduce, store, process, retrieve, transmit, distribute, publish, publicly display, publicly perform and hyperlink the Content

It's more restrictive than what Google claims they're allowed to do, but still overly broad enough to raise an eyebrow.

It's not that I look at the Google terms and laugh, "You silly people! It's nothing to worry about!" To be honest, it makes me think twice too. I'm just explaining from the service provider's point of view, why that clause may not be as evil as it looks. I can completely see why they would feel the need to give themselves a free pass in case someone gets lawsuit happy.

At the end of the day, Google is a business and they're not immune to bad press. Blatantly stealing from your users and exposing their private files would obviously be really bad for both your image and your business. They'd be idiots if they do that willfully and if you could prove they willfully did such unlawful things, a clause that says "we're allowed to get away with murder" is not going to be enough to shield them from wrongdoing.

 

[Alexander.Of.Oz]

At the end of the day, Google is a business and they're not immune to bad press. Blatantly stealing from your users and exposing their private files would obviously be really bad for both your image and your business. They'd be idiots if they do that willfully and if you could prove they willfully did such unlawful things, a clause that says "we're allowed to get away with murder" is not going to be enough to shield them from wrongdoing.

That web-hosting agreement was crazy! I doubt that many people ever read it.

My concern with google is this quote from their terms of service:

Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.

What they do with the information gleaned from your photo's is what I find most disturbing. Identifying people, pets, places, and objects within those photo's is an automated process applied on every upload you do to their servers, regardless of whether you have them in private sections or not. Applying that to find out more about you, your friends and relatives, so as to target adverts, amongst other things at you more directly is a concern for me.

I have been fully aware that they scan emails for quite a few years now, so rarely use my gmail account, preferring instead to use my own email servers, where I get to be big brother in this regards, reading my own emails!

 

[smirking]

That web-hosting agreement was crazy! I doubt that many people ever read it.

I know I never read them! Once I realized I was making people sign THAT, I started reading through some hosting agreements from elsewhere and all of them had some version of a phrase that said something like that... that you own the rights to your content, but we have your permission to do a lot of random things with it.

What they do with the information gleaned from your photo's is what I find most disturbing. Identifying people, pets, places, and objects within those photo's is an automated process applied on every upload you do to their servers, regardless of whether you have them in private sections or not. Applying that to find out more about you, your friends and relatives, so as to target adverts, amongst other things at you more directly is a concern for me.

I'm mostly concerned about my images and other data remaining private and under my control. I just don't know what to think about Google scrubbing my stuff for metadata. That kind of thing doesn't freak me out, but I probably should be more concerned.

 

[Alexander.Of.Oz]

I'm mostly concerned about my images and other data remaining private and under my control. I just don't know what to think about Google scrubbing my stuff for metadata. That kind of thing doesn't freak me out, but I probably should be more concerned.

It's the facial recognition, object recognition, etc... AI that scares the crap out of me! The use of that for marketing is pure evil at best...

The exif scrubbing is possibly the most harmless aspect of their data mining efforts.

 

[ChrisA]

Google Phots is not really intended to be used as a backup. OK you can use it that way but it is far batter to use a real cloud backup service.

The one I use is called "Backblaze" but there are other like it. It is better than using Google for two reasons:

1. The backup is automated files are sent to the cloud as soon as they are placed on your computer. The backup software runs continuously, scanning fr new stuff to backup and for changes (edits) to be saved. In this way it is like Time Machine.
2. The data in the server is encrypted. So even if someone breaks into my cloud account all they see is complete un-decyperable gibberish. The data is encrypted BEFORE it is sent to the cloud so there is never usable data on their system.

This second part is important. It means NO ONE is ever going to be able to do anything at all with the data.

 

[Kevin.Richards]

If you are talking about hacking then Google is the safe place to store your pictures, but make sure no unknown has physical access to your device. Other third party websites aren't just good as Google in keeping things safe.

 

[T909]

As the history has shown Google services are safer than Apple services (iCloud for example)
Google just sells your information, but I think your photos should be safe.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

As the history has shown Google services are safer than Apple services (iCloud for example)
Google just sells your information, but I think your photos should be safe.

Really? In what way has history shown that?

 

[Ray2]

Really? In what way has history shown that?

Well, my history with iCloud Drive for sure. 4.7gb of files that appeared in iCloud Drive but could no longer be downloaded or opened. Apple was very supportive for 3 weeks. When it became obvious they could not recover/restore the files, tech help simply disappeared, never to be heard from again. To the extent my emails where not replied to.

I had all but about 2gb backed up locally. The remaining 2gb were very recent patient scans which the hospital had. So I was fine. But for me, cloud storage is a big fail. Read the t&c. Pure CYA so they can't be held responsible for anything.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

Well, my history with iCloud Drive for sure. 4.7gb of files that appeared in iCloud Drive but could no longer be downloaded or opened. Apple was very supportive for 3 weeks. When it became obvious they could not recover/restore the files, tech help simply disappeared, never to be heard from again. To the extent my emails where not replied to.

I had all but about 2gb backed up locally. The remaining 2gb were very recent patient scans which the hospital had. So I was fine. But for me, cloud storage is a big fail. Read the t&c. Pure CYA so they can't be held responsible for anything.

So you had one incident and that is now a blanket statement that history has shown Google is safer. Seriously dude?

 

[Ray2]

So you had one incident and that is now a blanket statement that history has shown Google is safer. Seriously dude?

Yes that's a blanket statement. I would view myself as pretty stupid to again rely on Apple's iCloud and risk them losing access to my data yet again. Intelligent people learn by experience.

Seriously dude?