Google’s new Photos feature, Locked Photos, is rolling out to Android phones across all regions with the promise that your private photos and memories will remain just that: private.
Privacy on the internet honestly feels like a made-up concept to help us feel safer at night, considering just how many stories about mass hacks or OS vulnerabilities permeate our social media feeds on a daily basis. Amongst these daily nightmarish headlines and clickbait titles that keep swinging by, enough of them concern leaked photos to become their own separate category of news. Sure, it’s not like pictures are exactly the most private of personal content in the first place, what with the current generation of netizens’ propensity for documenting every aspect of their lives online. However, even private pictures put up on platforms such as the iCloud (which Apple has made more excuses for than one can count at this point) are often the subject of mass leaks. The point is simple: as more and more of our social norms shift to online interfaces, we need to have secure files and folders where our personal virtual belongings can be stored.
That’s where Google stepped in, offering up its Photos application. Photos is an app that’s widely used by Android users in order to store their pictures while also maintaining quality. While the Drive can very well serve the same purpose, it’s nice to have a dedicated and accessible space for just one’s photos and cherished memories. Photos also keeps getting a lot of updates to it, in terms of face tracking software, tags, editing tools, and the like to help it more thoroughly occupy the niche it’s aiming for. With Photos being a popular tool for Android users, and Apple already having its iCloud service (jury’s still out on whether or not that’s a plus point), Google thought it’d be best to provide a dedicated private space that users can utilize in order to store their own pictures. Voila! We now have Locked Photos rolling out.
Locked Photos lets users choose pictures from their gallery or even the Drive, then locks them behind a biometrics-locked folder, or passcode, in order to keep those memories completely private. Since such pictures aren’t kept on a cloud service, instead being virtually land-locked within the phone they were stored in, cybercriminals don’t have such an easy time of getting to them. Google’s own presentation of the new product displayed some very fun and wholesome family moments, such as parents keeping a secret puppy from their kids and then showing the photos later. Then again, this publication service passes absolutely no judgement on users and whatever else they might require to use Locked Photos for. Huh. Weird that I would have to specify that, no?
H/T: AP.
Read next: Google offers some handy features which will help you facilitate your medical problems and queries more easily
Privacy on the internet honestly feels like a made-up concept to help us feel safer at night, considering just how many stories about mass hacks or OS vulnerabilities permeate our social media feeds on a daily basis. Amongst these daily nightmarish headlines and clickbait titles that keep swinging by, enough of them concern leaked photos to become their own separate category of news. Sure, it’s not like pictures are exactly the most private of personal content in the first place, what with the current generation of netizens’ propensity for documenting every aspect of their lives online. However, even private pictures put up on platforms such as the iCloud (which Apple has made more excuses for than one can count at this point) are often the subject of mass leaks. The point is simple: as more and more of our social norms shift to online interfaces, we need to have secure files and folders where our personal virtual belongings can be stored.
That’s where Google stepped in, offering up its Photos application. Photos is an app that’s widely used by Android users in order to store their pictures while also maintaining quality. While the Drive can very well serve the same purpose, it’s nice to have a dedicated and accessible space for just one’s photos and cherished memories. Photos also keeps getting a lot of updates to it, in terms of face tracking software, tags, editing tools, and the like to help it more thoroughly occupy the niche it’s aiming for. With Photos being a popular tool for Android users, and Apple already having its iCloud service (jury’s still out on whether or not that’s a plus point), Google thought it’d be best to provide a dedicated private space that users can utilize in order to store their own pictures. Voila! We now have Locked Photos rolling out.
Locked Photos lets users choose pictures from their gallery or even the Drive, then locks them behind a biometrics-locked folder, or passcode, in order to keep those memories completely private. Since such pictures aren’t kept on a cloud service, instead being virtually land-locked within the phone they were stored in, cybercriminals don’t have such an easy time of getting to them. Google’s own presentation of the new product displayed some very fun and wholesome family moments, such as parents keeping a secret puppy from their kids and then showing the photos later. Then again, this publication service passes absolutely no judgement on users and whatever else they might require to use Locked Photos for. Huh. Weird that I would have to specify that, no?
Read next: Google offers some handy features which will help you facilitate your medical problems and queries more easily