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Yes, I just found out, at least Samsung Android, my phone does OCR on every picture ond does store it somehow in a DB. When I search for something on my phone,
by _trampeltier 3y ago
Yes, I just found out, at least Samsung Android, my phone does OCR on every picture ond does store it somehow in a DB. When I search for something on my phone, pictures with a part of the search string pop up instantly. Even bad pictures from a monitor, every word is indexed.
Of course .. I'm pretty sure, everything goes to Google / Samsung, you know, to help to make a better service.
- autoexec 3y agoI wouldn't be surprised if your phone was sending a copy of every picture you take to third parties too. Roku, for example, takes multiple screenshots every second of whatever happens to be on the screen and sends them back to Roku who analyzes them to guess at what you're into and to identify the content. I one day discovered that my phone's Samsung keyboard (the default one that came with the device out of the box) was logging every key press and sending it to a third party whose privacy policy said that they used it for "market research" and to guess at things like the intelligence and education level of the user. I immediately installed a new keyboard. I went with AnySoftKeyboard and so far it's been great, although, understandably, the autocorrect isn't anything close to what it used to be.
- _trampeltier 3y agoYes I know. The keyboard was the first thing I changed.
- petabytes 3y agoIs that Google Photos? It does it by default if you back up images there, and can be disabled.
- morkalork 3y agoMany people end up using Google Photos just because they have an android phone, it was never anything explicitly intentional. And it definitely does more than OCR, a buddy wanted to show me some pics from their weekend and typed "kyak" into the search bar and voila, there were their photos of them in a kyak.
- _trampeltier 3y agoI don't use Google Photos, since it is, it was, broken without internet access. I block Google Photos with NoRootFirewall. Some years ago so it stopped to show me even local pictures. But yes, since it's not possible to deinstall, it is still there ...