Google Photos promises to keep your memories safe, organized, and always within reach — but its convenience has a cost. While your pictures may be protected from hackers, they’re not always private, especially from Google itself. From unclear AI practices(ventana nueva) to cases where people lost entire accounts over misinterpreted images, the privacy risks are often overlooked.
If you think a Google One subscription will buy you privacy, know that it only gives you more storage — not stronger boundaries around your data. Whether you’re a free user or a paying one, your data still feeds the machine.
In this article, we’ll break down how safe Google Photos really is and why switching to a secure, privacy-first alternative like Proton Drive might be the best way to fully protect your photos.
- How secure is Google Photos
- Does Google Photos respect your privacy?
- Google Photos lacks transparency
- Keep your photos private and secure with Proton Drive
How secure is Google Photos
While Google has systems in place(ventana nueva) to protect your photos and data, they don’t guarantee full privacy or control.
Strong encryption, but not end to end
Google encrypts your data while it’s being transferred (in transit) and when it’s stored on Google servers (at rest) using AES-256 encryption and TLS protocols. Your photos are protected from outsiders while syncing or sitting in the cloud, but they are not end-to-end encrypted — Google can still see all your data. That’s why the company is attempting to change the meaning of privacy.
Even within Google’s closed system, your photos may be at risk. In 2019, a bug in Google Takeout(ventana nueva) (the tool that lets you download all your data) caused users to receive videos from other people’s Google Photos libraries.
Two-step authentication for account security
You can protect your Google Account — and, by extension, your photo library — by enabling two-factor authentication (2FA). Even if someone gets your password, they would still need a second form of verification to get in, like your fingerprint, face, screen lock, or a code sent to your phone.
Limited control over shared links
Google Photos lets you share photos with others via email or public links, but it offers limited control and visibility over what you’ve shared. There’s no central Sharing section to view all shared photos and albums — you have to manually open each album and check for a Shared tag.
It gets more complicated if you’re trying to find and revoke access to shared photos since the option is buried in Your Google Account button → Photos settings → Sharing → Manage sharing activity on the mobile app.
In contrast, Proton Drive makes it easy to view all your shared links in one place — a dedicated Sharing tab across web, Android, and iOS apps. You can revoke access, set password protection for public links to individual photos or entire folders, set expiration dates, and track how many times your shared content has been viewed.
Does Google Photos respect your privacy?
When it comes to privacy, the biggest concern isn’t external threats, but how much Google does with the photos and data you willingly give it.
Organizing your photos and profiling you
Every photo you upload carries metadata, such as timestamps, location, and device info. Google uses this, along with AI features like face recognition and activity-based personalization, to organize your library. It can highlight the albums you view most often in Memories and recognize places, events, pets, and people.
You can disable these settings at Your Google Account button → Photos settings → Preferences. But this doesn’t mean Google forgets what it already knows — it just stops personalizing the experience.
The face grouping technology hasn’t gone unnoticed by regulators. The company faced a class-action lawsuit in Illinois for collecting and storing biometric data without proper consent. Rather than fight it, Google quietly settled in 2022 for $100 million(ventana nueva) — just another line item in a long list of privacy-related fines that rarely lead to meaningful change.
Unclear if your photos are used for AI training
Google has introduced Ask Photos(ventana nueva), an AI tool powered by its Gemini language model that lets you search your photo history using plain language. While useful, it raises questions about how deeply Google analyzes your content — and what else it might learn from your photos. The core privacy policy(ventana nueva) doesn’t clearly say whether your Google Photos are excluded from AI training by default, which leaves users with little clarity as AI becomes more embedded in everyday tools.
From account termination to legal investigation
Google doesn’t just collect data. It also reserves the right to act on what it finds — sometimes with irreversible or far-reaching consequences.
During lockdown, a father in San Francisco took photos of his son to send to a doctor. Google flagged the images as harmful(ventana nueva), reported him to the police, and permanently deleted his entire account — including emails, photos, and purchases. Even after law enforcement cleared him of wrongdoing, Google refused to give his data back.
In another case, a mother lost access to her entire Google Account(ventana nueva) — including wedding photos, tax documents, and a decade of emails — after her child uploaded a video that was flagged. Despite repeated appeals and no response from Google, her data was only restored after media coverage brought attention to the case.
Google Photos lacks transparency
No matter what Google says about its security and privacy practices, there’s no way to independently verify those claims. Google Photos isn’t open source, and its systems aren’t subject to external audits. That means you have to take Google at its word, even when the stakes involve sensitive personal data.
The only real way to make sure your photos and data don’t end up in the wrong hands is to stop using Google Photos altogether. If you’re currently a user, start deGoogling by moving your photos to Proton Drive and removing everything from Google Photos to take back control.
Keep your photos private and secure with Proton Drive
If you’re looking for true privacy, Proton Drive offers what Google Photos doesn’t: end-to-end encryption by design, even for your metadata — and this protection can’t be turned off. Your photos and files can only be accessed by you and the people you choose to share them with — not even we can see them.
You can share photos and entire folders with anyone using email addresses or public links. Folders with edit access allow others (even outside of Proton) to upload their own images to your Drive account, which makes it easy to collaborate on shared albums like family photo collections.
Proton Drive works on all your devices through Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and web apps, so you can upload, sync, and access your photos anywhere — with automatic photo backup on mobile. You can protect your Proton Account with 2FA, Dark web monitoring to detect leaked personal data, and Proton Sentinel for advanced protection against targeted attacks.
Like all Proton apps, Drive is open source and independently audited, so anyone can check our claims. We don’t show ads or spy on you. Proton, including our free plans, is funded exclusively by our community of paying subscribers, so our only incentive is to protect your privacy — not exploit your data.
Get started with 5 GB of free, private storage on Proton Drive.
