Google automatically sharing geotagged photos from Photos to Maps

SmellyGeekBoy 7 years ago |

The tweet doesn't say that these photos came from "Photos", just an "unused account". All other evidence seems to suggest that these are photos from another service called Panoramio which Google acquired at some point. Not saying it's right or wrong by the way (perhaps something in Panoramio's TOS that all photos were public), but based on this news I'd assume that my beach photos in Google Photos are safe from prying eyes - for now.

YouKnowBetter 7 years ago |

Strange... Among all of my google accounts I have checked and NOTHING was automagically shared. My pictures must suck or I did NOT do:

Share a photo On your computer, open Google Maps. In the top left, click Menu Menu and then Your contributions. Choose Photos. Find the photo you’d like to share. In the top right, click More More and then Share.

arturhoo 7 years ago | |

As a counter point, I woke up today to this weird email: https://bit.ly/2wMpPL3

Picture is from 2011 and was originally hosted on Picasa (but I'm pretty certain it was never shared publicly) and I don't have a Google Plus account. If I go to the picture itself on Photos, there's no sharing/privacy controls, so I'd assume it is private.

The wording on the email makes it even worse, as if I had intentionally done something overnight to share them on Maps.

crottypeter 7 years ago | | |

Perhaps your google account has been compromised?

arturhoo 7 years ago | | |

I can't find any evidence that it has been. I use a long and strong password and have 2-step-verification enabled in my account. I haven't received any new account activity emails and the I don't see anything suspicious on myaccount.google.com

As far as I remember, I've never used Panoramio (as a comment above suggests to be the cause). I'd agree that this seems limited to some specific circumstances.

josecurioso 7 years ago |

Yeah... I'm going to go out on a limb and say this guy messed up with one of the prompts asking for permission. This just doesn't happen.

lowry 7 years ago |

Same for me, but they took my 2009 photos from an old OSM-based website with panorama in its name that I used back then.

Can't remember the exact name of the website, though.

muro 7 years ago | |

panoramio?

http://www.panoramio.com/

lowry 7 years ago | | |

Yes! I am pretty sure my photos were on Panoramio only. I never published them elsewhere, not even uploaded to Google Photos.

muro 7 years ago |

Never seen that. Maps regularly asks to review and share photos of some place, but never automatically.

For now, I'll go with fake news.

dontCallMeDaddy 7 years ago |

Highly doubtful that.

jchw 7 years ago |

Never seen this. Doesn't sound intentional at all.