How do I stop Google mail identifying my child in photo's?

[Zak33]

Hi all

My missus just sent a pair of photo's from her iPhone on a GMAIL account, to me and my parents

the photos are of my son when he was born, and of him today on his 10th birthday.

the text says "He's grown a bit in the last decade!"

it arrived in my Virgin account on my PC exactly as it was sent.

But on my GMAIL account on my mobile, (which I forward from Virgin to my mobi), there were three blue bordered boxes with what I assume are potential Auto Responses

He is so cute!
Lovely!
Wow!


So bearing in mind I have no expectation of the photo contents being scanned , how does it know he's a boy, or that it's a baby in one photo?

Did it read the text and algorithm it's way to that assumption? Or did it recognise his facial characteristics?

Can I disable that?

[Stringent]

The Gmail App has been updated to include 'Smart Reply' responses. I think it reads the text and makes a best guess as to what to reply. But with Google, who knows if its looking at the picture with facial recognition as well!

Some links
https://9to5mac.com/2017/05/17/gmail...os-app-update/
https://blog.google/products/gmail/s...eply-in-gmail/

[Saracen]

I can't answer specifically on how they did that, but bear in mind that Google's business model is pretty much 100% about data acquisition, accumulation, analysis/data-mining, and subsequent exploitation.

The only really effective way to stop them doing it is to take every reasonable, practixal step to prevent them getting the data in the first place. What's a bit .... scary .... us that Google will know a LOT, and have a photo collection, of your boy by the time he's old enough to have an informed opinion on whether he wants them to have it or not. Mind you, judging by the way the world's going, it'll be second nature by then and he won't think twice about it.

Question is .... what's "practical"? And that's subjective.

For me, it's ....

- don't use Gmail, or any branded versions thereof, for ANYTHING you don't want warehoused
- preferably, use a secure email service
- for anything you really want kept private, use an encrypted email, and/or encrypted attachment.


Of course, if you do this, prepare to be accused of bring a paranoid cyber-luddite, and offered various tinfoil hats.

[scaryjim]

... the text says "He's grown a bit in the last decade!" ...

... how does it know he's a boy ...

If it does read the text, that bit's not too hard!

Beyond that, none of the auto-responses automatically suggest that it knows there's a baby in the photo. The responses could equally apply to a dog, or a bearded dragon, or a particularly attractive ficus. They're generic responses - they only seem particularly relevant because you already know what's in the photos.

I can almost completely guarantee you that the responses come from processing the text. Natural Language Processing isn't a completely solved area of computer science, but we're a lot closer to extracting meaning from text than we are from photographs. As with most things, there's a relevant XKCD here:


https://xkcd.com/1425/

[Jonj1611]

I use zoho.com for mail, they guarantee not to scan your mail.

On the other hand think this will make some good reading - http://time.com/4785732/gmail-google-smart-reply/

[peterb]

As per Saracen - don't use Gmail and restrict use of Google to as low as reasonable practicable. Get a domain name and a hosting package for around £40 to £50 a year - or - run your own mail server (but you will need a static IP address).

[Splash]

As others have said: don't use Gmail. Also don't send to anyone who uses Gmail, or anyone who might forward to someone who uses Gmail. This includes people who might use Gmail for mail filtering before relaying on to their final email destination.


Basically don't use email for photos of your kids.

[Ferral]

Just one thing comes to mind!! :

[Saracen]

On the upside, the situation does appear to be going to improve when, next year, our rather antiquated Data Protection Act gets replaced, EU-wide, by a FAR more effective General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Among other things, this requires companies to both obtain and be able to demonstrate active, informed user consent for data to be captured, retained and processed, AND a right to revoke that consent easily and have stored data deleted. That is to say, revoking consent doesn't just stop them using stored data while still retaining it, but requires them to actively remove such records.

Lets just hope that either the EU get this in before Brexit and we either implement it while a member, or piggy-back it via the 'Great Repeal bill' and it's adoption of existing EU law.

Mind you, I can see being required to do this causing screeches of pain from companies that have to do a 100% top-down data audit to work out what they've got and how to remove upon request. And the likes of Google are going to truly hate this.