this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

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I've read on reddit that Google still provides unlimited photos backup if you own Pixel 5a and lower. On rooted Android you can fake that and get free backup storage, but who wants to give pictures to Google?! I was thinking if it's possible or done by someone to create an environment on Docker by faking device info to access that free storage and backup rclone crypted files as images (by .jpeg fake extension or something)?

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know it's not the point, but I do think it would be easier to set up a photo server than to hack around Google.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Look into self hosting

Setup seafile for normal dropbox like functionality and immich for photogallerly.

In the end , after alk rhe effort to trick Google, all your shit aill still be on google.

MiniPCs are quite cheap now on Alibaba or Amazon etc. Wait for a sale on a large HD abd you're good to go.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

100% @gargari

Even something simple like syncthing is very easy

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Thakns for hte gerat tipS!?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Immich is a great service and the app is basically Google photos

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I use Immich. Highly recommend.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

That's a recipe for data wipeout.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

You're trying to trick Google into giving you paid service. It's very much different to ad blocks and whatnot. This will cause you mountains of problem, if possible in the first place...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

at that point it'd be easier for you to encode the data as a video and upload it to YouTube. which someone did, btw (can't find the link tho)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

YouTube reencodes your uploads so I don't see how could you decode your original data.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Because it encodes it visually

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is true, but I forgot to mention that the PoC I saw encoded the data into what is essentially a bunch of QR codes, which reduces the density of the data but beats the compression of Youtube.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The word you're looking for is steganography

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mm no, that is encoding a message in the image, but the image remains the same and normal. Only the msg within is hidden cryptographycally...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Recently I've read a comment here on Lemmy about someone who keeps an old pixel at home on a charger, and runs Syncthing on it to sync pictures to the phone so they will get automatically uploaded.
If you were to go that way, you could obfuscate your images before copying to the syncthing shared folder. If you were to encrypt it, be sure to only encrypt the content of the images, to keep any headers and such so that google still sees it as an image. You may try with encrypting the whole file, you'll have to try it out if that works.

Other things that may be interesting:

  • several years ago (2-3?) I've heard of a fork of the Simple Gallery app (the orange gallery app on fdroid) that if I remember correctly encrypted your photos and uploaded them that way to google photos. In google photos they were "viewable", but they were just noise
  • you mentioned Docker, so I suspect you're not afraid of selfhosting. If you have the storage, you may like Immich. It's basically a google photos clone. App on f-droid.
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just buy a pixel 1 for 50 bucks. Then I use that to upload my current photos. Works flawlessly

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The hard part of the problem is not spoofing the pixel, but preserving your privacy.

Your solution solves the easier problem, but it doesn't preserve your privacy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

i don't have unlimited photo storage for any of my two pixel 3 anymore. is this regional?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yup. They spoof you as Pixel OG and you get Unlimited Backup in OG resolution. I have been using it on my main acc for past 6 months or so.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I am not sure that can be done. For some devices, the free backups only apply to "Storage saver" quality, which means decreasing resolution and quality, which obviously couldn't be done here.
Secondly, there is some file size limit. I think 50MB/image, but you could split the files, if it worked in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

there are modded google photos apk but idk how much of that can be trusted