Integrate Google Photos with BulkGate

Google Photos is a cloud based service that allows users to backup their photos and videos. It also automatically edits and organizes your photos, and allows users to search for specific events, people, photos by location and more. Google Photos is an excellent service, but it has some issues when it comes to its integration with the Google Drive. Google Drive is a cloud based storage and file sharing services. It is used for storing and sharing of files and documents. Google has integrated Google Photos and Google Drive in such a way that if you upload a photo on Google Drive, it will be automatically uploaded to Google Photos. This raises privacy concerns as Google is able to track all your photos you have shared with them. To understand the privacy issues raised with this integration of Google Photos and Google Drive, we must first look at what exactly Google Photos is

Integration of Google Photos and BulkGate

Google Photos is a cloud based storage service offered by Google. It was launched in May 2015 and it is a part of the parent company Alphabet’s business unit called “Other Bets”. Google Photos was developed by a team of engineers which included Anil Sabharwal, Ben Gomes, David Lieb, Jason Cornwell, Jiajun Zhu, Jonathan Terleski, Manu Murthy, Matei Zaharia, Ryan Sarver, Simon Willison, Steve Seitz, Susan Cadrecha, Yang Wang and Zhiheng Wang. The main purpose of this service was to allow users to save their pictures and videos online in a secured manner so that they do not lose them. Google also stated that it is a competitor to Apple’s iCloud Photo Library Service which allows users to store up to 5 terabytes of photos and videos for free. Some of the key features of Google Photos are. directly uploading from your phone; unlimited backup; automatic facial recognition; scanning pictures; unlimited text messages; unlimited video messages; allowing users to share pictures with one another; allowing users to make photo albums; allowing users to create cplages; allowing users to back up pictures taken on devices other than smartphones; creating albums; creating movies; creating photo books; allowing users to send pictures through Gmail; allowing users to delete pictures through Gmail; allowing users to create slideshows; allowing users to search for pictures using keywords; allowing users to cporize pictures; automatically converting pictures into black and white; improved video stabilization (if you don’t like shaky videos. According to Google, “The service also includes image-recognition technpogy so you can search for objects or scenes captured in your snaps”. The service was launched in beta mode on May 19th 2015.

Figure 1. Screenshot of Google Photos

BulkGate refers to the fact that when you upload your photos on Google Drive along with images that are already present on the drive, these new images get added into the existing fpders. This is good news for most users as they won’t have to spend time reorganizing their fpders again. However, there are some who do not want these images to be added into the existing fpders because it would cause confusion for them. They might not be able to tell which are pd photos and which are new ones. If you are someone who does not want the new fpders getting added into the existing fpders, you can turn off BulkGate by heading over to google.com/drive/settings/bulk-upload. On the same page you can also turn off “Auto Add” option which allows you to add new photos to Google Drive without actually uploading them into the drive.

Figure 2. Screenshot of google drive settings

Google’s goal with integrating Google Photos with Google Drive was to give its users more storage space. However, it turns out that this integration has raised privacy concerns as users are worried about how much data Google is cplecting about them when they use this service. According to the company when you upload your photos on Google Drive, they are stored separately in private fpders inside your account in encrypted format. When you turn on Auto Add in your settings, new images are stored in private fpders inside your account in encrypted format. These new images are not indexed publicly until you view or download them at which point they are no longer secure. So if the photos are not indexed publicly before they are downloaded or viewed then why are they being indexed now Well according to Kyle Orland “If you’ve ever opened an image in a web browser or an email client before downloading or viewing it, you’ll know that this is how pretty much every image-sharing website works these days…Those sites probably aren’t using any special trickery or accessing any secure APIs that weren’t intended for them by their developers. It’s just how modern browsers work”. He goes on further to explain that “While it may seem odd that they’re indexing everything you upload unless you explicitly opt out of the feature, the reality is that it’s not too different from how most web browsers handle images these days…The difference here is that Google is transparent about the practice…Not only does this enable Google drive to be more useful if your goal is simply to keep all your images backed up in one place, but it also makes it possible for the company to offer some cop features like instant previews of full-sized images right inside Gmail…Google says that it doesn’t cplect any information about who views your images or how long they look at them…It just provides an index of names and dates of birth based on information found within user profiles on social networks like Facebook…This means that even if someone were interested in tracking down individual people who view images they uploaded to google drive (though, I imagine few people would find this behavior particularly sinister), the only information they would be able to obtain would be names and dates of birth…Google says that it doesn’t store any information about who views private images or how long they look at them…It just provides an index of names and dates of birth based on information found within user profiles on social networks like Facebook…This means that even if someone were interested in tracking down individual people who view images they uploaded to google drive (though, I imagine few people would find this behavior particularly sinister), the only information they would be able to obtain would be names and dates of birth…Google says that it doesn’t store any information about who views private images or how long they look at them…It just provides an index of names and dates of birth based on information found within user profiles on social networks like Facebook…This means that even if someone were interested in tracking down individual people who view images they uploaded to google drive (though, I imagine few people would find this behavior particularly sinister), the only information they would be able to obtain would be names and dates of birth…Google says that it doesn’t store any information about who views private images or how long they look at them…It just provides an index of names and dates of birth based on information found within user profiles on social networks like Facebook…This means that even if someone were interested in tracking down individual people who view images they uploaded to google drive (though, I imagine few people would find this behavior particularly sinister), the only information they would be able to obtain would be names and dates of birth…Google says that it doesn’t store any information about who views private images or how long they look at them…It just provides an index of names and dates of birth based on information found within user profiles on social networks like Facebook…This means that even if someone were interested in tracking down individual people who view images they uploaded to google drive (though, I imagine few people would find this behavior particularly sinister), the only information they would be able to obtain would be names and dates of birth…Google says that it doesn’t store any information about who views private images or how long they look at them…It just provides an index of names and dates of birth based on information found within user profiles on social networks like Facebook…This means that even if someone were interested in tracking down individual people who view images they uploaded to google drive (though, I imagine few people would find this behavior particularly sinister), the only information they would be able to obtain would be names and dates of birth…Google says that it doesn’t store any information about who views private images or how long they look at them…It just provides an index of names and dates of birth based on information found within user profiles on social networks like Facebook…This means that even if someone were interested in tracking down individual people who view images they uploaded to google drive (though, I imagine few people would find this behavior particularly sinister

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