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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Thanks! and yikes

Yes— they spy on every pic and text upload. They literally are big brother.

I uploaded a picture to Google Maps once. They told me they needed to access my photos to be able to upload the picture.

A week later I get a notification “hey do you want to upload this photograph of a restaurant you took at location x?”. So Google Maps was busy rifling through my photos while I was going about my day-to-day business.

Creepy, gross and repulsive.

GrapheneOS has storage scopes which make the app think it has full folder/file access but in reality you can choose the exact files or folders to give access. It helps keep invasive apps in line.

So does iOS. That's why this caught me by surprise. Does Android not have this built in?

On iOS, there's the picker for access. It doesnt trick the app into thinking it has full access. All apps should just be forced to use the private picker style which is convenient and private.

This feature is to make privacy-invasive apps, that want to snoop and degrade functionality if they don't, behave.

On iOS, it tells the app you only gave it limited access, and that causes some apps to badger you for full access or refuse to work without full access.

Yes, they scan your photos and text and look for reasons to report you to a government agency. They can completely misinterpret or fabricate what you have with no real controls other than good faith.

For somethings I think they are legally obligated to do this. It is creepy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com