{"id":36821,"date":"2022-08-22T16:52:45","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T20:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=36821"},"modified":"2022-10-10T10:57:01","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T14:57:01","slug":"google-account-deleted-due-to-csam-false-positive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/22\/google-account-deleted-due-to-csam-false-positive\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Account Deleted Due to CSAM False Positive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kashmir Hill<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

With help from the photos, the doctor diagnosed the issue and prescribed antibiotics, which quickly cleared it up. But the episode left Mark with a much larger problem, one that would cost him more than a decade of contacts, emails and photos, and make him the target of a police investigation. Mark, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of potential reputational harm, had been caught in an algorithmic net designed to snare people exchanging child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Two days after taking the photos of his son, Mark’s phone made a blooping notification noise: His account had been disabled because of “harmful content” that was “a severe violation of Google’s policies and might be illegal.”<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

A few days after Mark filed the appeal, Google responded that it would not reinstate the account, with no further explanation.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

CyberTipline staff members add any new abusive images to the hashed database that is shared with technology companies for scanning purposes. When Mark’s wife learned this, she deleted the photos Mark had taken of their son from her iPhone, for fear Apple might flag her account.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

The police determined that no crime had occurred, but Google permanently deleted his account, anyway. Apparently, the police now have the only copy of his data.<\/p>\n\n

I don’t really want to use iCloud Photo Library, but I have it enabled now because Image Capture doesn’t work wirelessly, and recent versions have been buggy. I guess the proper way to take photos for a doctor would be to temporarily turn off iCloud Photo Library or to use a third-party camera app that doesn’t save to the camera roll. But I bet nearly every iPhone user has some photos—be they medical, sexual, or of documents—that they would like to mark as private (not just hidden<\/a>). They should still be backed up but protected with an extra password or something. I don’t know how to prevent this from being abused to store actual CSAM, though.<\/p>\n\n

Meek Geek<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

If you are accused by Google of doing something they don’t like and have your account blocked, there is no easy way to get human support on the other side to review the issue.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Kyle Howells<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

One of the things I’ve been doing the last few years is trying to slowly remove Google as a single point of failure in my life.<\/p>\n

Spreading out my online life over more companies so no 1 company can ruin my life at the flick of a switch.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

There’s no real way to remove Apple if you use an iPhone.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n