So, I just noticed something REALLY weird today and I don't know what to make of it...
I installed a new app on my phone (Lyft) and it asked me to setup a profile photo. Okay, no problem. I click the option to select photos from my existing collection and it takes me to the gallery to select a photo. I'm scrolling down, looking for a good photo when I suddenly come across photos that I did not take. There's about 30 of them and they look like they were taken at a Energy Conference in Beddington, UK on November 26th. I live in Washington State, USA and have not been anywhere near the UK and my phone has not gone missing or been out of my sight for the last few weeks. This is strange and creepy. How are someone else's photos on my phone?
I start doing a bit of investigation. I close the Lyft app and open my gallery app on my S9+. I scroll through all my photos, but these stranger's photos are not showing up no matter how I sort the display settings. I open up another app (Uber) and go to change my profile photo. I opt to choose from my gallery and there's the stranger's photos again. I notice that the file name, file size and date of the photo is provided in this view, so I connected my phone to the PC and ran a search for some of those file names and came up with nothing. I searched my phone using my file manager app and also found nothing.
Someone on Reddit recommended I try using my email app to send myself the image so I can investigate the details. This worked, but only deepens the mystery! It seems like the photos were taken with an Olympus Digital Camera (not even a smartphone!) and the date taken was from way back in 2006!?
At this point I'm out of ideas. I have no clue why these mystery photos are on my phone and can't find out how to find/delete them or how they got on my phone in the first place.
It's so freakin' weird! I'm sharing a few screenshots here in case it helps anyone else identify my issue. If anyone has thoughts, please share them.
P.S. My phone was purchased new over a year ago. If anyone cares, I posted this on Reddit before coming here seeking additional help. You can see the Reddit thread here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS9/comments/e5okh4/really_weird_gallery_issue_with_a_strangers/
wonder if they're embedded in the apps?
One possible reason is that it's just downloaded by some other app, e.g. Facebook downloading photos from a post that you came across. If you don't remember anything related, did you ever have anyone else using your phone?
The Samsung gallery is written by Samsung while the system file picker (called DocumentsUI) is mainly written by Google, so they might be having different strategies on what photos to hide, e.g. Samsung thinks Facebook photo download directory shouldn't be shown, while DocumentsUI doesn't, so it's entirely possible that you can only find the photo via picker.
Related
I was just informed that Froyo 2.2 has removed an important setting from our phones, the ability to turn off geotagging of pictures taken with the Captivate. Read about the dangers here:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2010/10/07/gps-on-cell-phone-photos-can-put-you-in-danger/
This basically renders the camera useless for posting pics to social networking sites like facebook without making those pics vulnerable to disclosing personal info. This is unacceptable and Samsung should immediately release an update to fix this. I suggest we contact Samsung and let them know about this potentially dangerous issue and insist they rectify it ASAP. Start by going here:
https://contactus.samsung.com/customer/contactus/formmail/mail/MailQuestionProduct.jsp?SITE_ID=1
Here's the message I sent them, you can copy and paste it.
The recent update of the Captivate to Froyo 2.2 has apparently removed the ability to stop photos taken with the device from being geotagged. This option is important for those of us who upload photos taken with the phone to social networking sites from being vulnerable to giving out personal information. This is a very real danger and Samsung should immediately provide an update that will restore this ability to Captivate users.
Link to modified camera.apk for rooted and custom ROM users:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=949566
In the meantime, how about turning off the GPS as a workaround when about to take a pic
fldude99 said:
In the meantime, how about turning off the GPS as a workaround when about to take a pic
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You would have to turn off GPS and location services and then remember to turn them both back on, which is a pain. I found a solution for those of us on custom Froyo ROMs here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=949566
I'm going to try it, but this does not help those on unrooted stock Froyo. Samsung needs to fix this.
EDIT: Installed the zip from the above link and it works fine. Still, Samsung should not have removed this feature.
BTW, airplane mode does not, in my experience, disable geotagging for some reason. My only thought is that the phone is storing the last known location. The only thing that stopped the geotag was disabling location services.
I installed the modded camera.apk and it's working great on my rooted stock 2.2.
One thing I've found is that my battery is happier with location services turned off. I'd love to figure out how to use Tasker to turn location services on when I'm in Maps or Navigation or at some regular interval so my weather widget can update.
lactardjosh said:
BTW, airplane mode does not, in my experience, disable geotagging for some reason. My only thought is that the phone is storing the last known location. The only thing that stopped the geotag was disabling location services.
I installed the modded camera.apk and it's working great on my rooted stock 2.2.
One thing I've found is that my battery is happier with location services turned off. I'd love to figure out how to use Tasker to turn location services on when I'm in Maps or Navigation or at some regular interval so my weather widget can update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can u post the camera apk here please.
Found it
now that is some useful info. thank you
Sometimes I like to geotag..however the other day I took a picture and the correct location showed up.....later on when I looked at the picture the geotag info changed.....any ideas why this would happen?
I kill coneys, not phones.
Thanks for the heads up, I never noticed this either... I gotta give this info to a few friends who are still using the official Froyo rom on their Captivates... I hope Samsung pushes out a fix for this ASAP (yea, I'm not holding my breath), it really is a huge privacy concern.
Miami_Son said:
You would have to turn off GPS and location services and then remember to turn them both back on, which is a pain. I found a solution for those of us on custom Froyo ROMs here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=949566
I'm going to try it, but this does not help those on unrooted stock Froyo. Samsung needs to fix this.
EDIT: Installed the zip from the above link and it works fine. Still, Samsung should not have removed this feature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe add this link to the OP, too, so it's right there when people start reading the thread?
Facebook in share option is still there in camera app. I dont need that geotagging thing.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Well, ya installed that camera - now we need to remove Flash option
nice catch
BTW, GPS is not the only way the Captivate geolocates the pics. Mine is almost always turned off and all the pics I took lately were indoors; still, they were geotaged. It appears to be using cell towers as the position on the map was a bit off and exactly located where the towers are in my neighborhood.
Yes the only way to turn off geotagging is if all location settings (gps and wireless networks) are turned off. Wonder why this hasn't made news sites like phandroid etc...
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
I was looking through a few pictures in my gallery, and for a phone with a non-functional GPS system, the geotags are surprisingly accurate. In the gallery there is an option to view each picture on the map, and Google translates the latitude and longitude into street addresses. A picture taken in my office (no possibility of GPS location, and tower location is only accurate to 1700m) shows a tag right in front of my building. A picture taken in my friend's house (a house apparently made of lead, as no one can get cellular service there) has the next door neighbor's address on it.
However, pictures taken at a time when I had the app Bluetooth GPS Provider running show no coordinate information at all, instead displaying "location unavailable" or something to that effect. I use an external GPS receiver with my phone, and Bluetooth GPS Provider feeds the data from the receiver to the Captivate. Apparently, this service prevents the camera from geotagging whatsoever. If anyone is incredibly concerned about geotagging, toggling this app on could be a workaround.
Unfortunately, I can't read the pages linked in the OP right at the moment, and it's possible this question is answered somewhere in one of those articles. But I'm guessing the geotag coordinates are saved in a picture's EXIF information. Does all of that really persist through Facebook's image conversion process? When you upload a file, it's resized, recompressed, and renamed. I'm surprised that the EXIF metadata is saved after all that. I really had no idea!
Perception 10.2 | SpeedMod K13C | I9000ZSJPG
Ikonomi said:
Unfortunately, I can't read the pages linked in the OP right at the moment, and it's possible this question is answered somewhere in one of those articles. But I'm guessing the geotag coordinates are saved in a picture's EXIF information. Does all of that really persist through Facebook's image conversion process? When you upload a file, it's resized, recompressed, and renamed. I'm surprised that the EXIF metadata is saved after all that. I really had no idea!
Perception 10.2 | SpeedMod K13C | I9000ZSJPG
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Generally it does. I use 'picsay pro', and find that the location info is preserved when I change the image size.
The EXIF data is preserved, in most cases, and not just on facebook. It happens with Photobucket, Flickr, Kodak and almost all photo sharing sites. I saw a news report where Adam Savage of the TV show Mythbusters had innocently posted a pic of his vehicle onto a social networking site. Unbeknownst to him it had GPS info in it, which turned out to be right in front of his house where the pic was taken. A fan drew his attention to it and he was astonished to realize that he could have had some deranged stalker show up on his doorstep (ala My Sister Sam actress Rebecca Schaefer) because of an innocent photo he posted on a website. While this is not being reported much in the mainstream news, it is not a secret. The DOD is so concerned that it requires that servicemen on active duty not use these phone features while deployed or while on base due to the risk of giving away confidential information. Check out the pdf file at this website to see how our military is being informed about this.
http://redcloud.korea.army.mil/Web-Security/Downloads
Miami_Son said:
The EXIF data is preserved, in most cases, and not just on facebook.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is not true. No facebook photo has metadata in it, it's stripped out in the upload process. I am using firefox right now and I have an add-on called EXIF Viewer, and I have tested this. Same goes for photobucket and Imgur. Most photo upload sites like photobucket and flickr(the feature is optional here) scramble the metadata when they are uploaded. The lady in the story used twitpic, which clearly doesn't erase exif data on upload, but there are some nice little bits of software that do. If you save a photo in photoshop, for example, you have the opportunity to set the metadata setting to 'none'. Then when you save it, it does not contain any of the identifying tags.
The point is to be responsible for your own data and information that you share on the net or in any pseudo-public setting. Ignorance is no excuse.
I have several pictures taken over the last few weeks. I keep GPS off, but locations using WiFi or Wireless Networks on, and all of my pictures show location unknown.
Also, I installed the modified camera.apk from SGSTools, can anyone confirm which version it is?
clemmie said:
This is not true. No facebook photo has metadata in it, it's stripped out in the upload process. I am using firefox right now and I have an add-on called EXIF Viewer, and I have tested this. Same goes for photobucket and Imgur. Most photo upload sites like photobucket and flickr(the feature is optional here) scramble the metadata when they are uploaded. The lady in the story used twitpic, which clearly doesn't erase exif data on upload, but there are some nice little bits of software that do. If you save a photo in photoshop, for example, you have the opportunity to set the metadata setting to 'none'. Then when you save it, it does not contain any of the identifying tags.
The point is to be responsible for your own data and information that you share on the net or in any pseudo-public setting. Ignorance is no excuse.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1. Most responsible photo sharing sites strip out the location data. But you are responsible for the content you share. So even if the Captivate no longer supports the option, there are likely other ways to keep your data safe. Also, sounds like an opportunity for someone to make an app that automatically cleanses EXIF data according to your preferences.
Hello,
I just discoverd that my Nexus S is sorting the pictures in the Android gallery in a very strange way.
I have pictures without geo-tag and some with geo-tag. All the pictures with geo-tag are somehow sorted under a wrong date. That means they are on the wrong place in the gallery. But when I check the details of the picture there is the right date in the file information.
This problem seem to apply only to geo-tagged pictures.
It's a little bit hard to describe. Here an example.
I took a picture on the 24th APRIL WITH a geo-tag. When I scroll now through the gallery the picture appears among the pictures I took on the 24th MARCH. When I check the details of the picture it still says "taken on 24th April".
Did anybody experience the same behaviour or do you have any idea what causes it and how it can be fixed?
Thanks!
Same thing here, I think it's a known bug though along with some pictures disappearing from the gallery and the gallery not displaying photos at full resolution. Try quickpic if you want an alternative. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.alensw.PicFolder
I'd love it if someone would just fix the stock gallery though and repost it to the market - it's a pretty photo viewer!
i would just like to add that i'm experiencing similar issues as well
the stock gallery app doesn't sort my pictures correctly after a while (it may seem ok at first.. but take some shots and videos everyday, you'll see the order beginning to mess up..)
this is pathetic considering the maturity of android (this never happen on my iphone 3gs)
Same here since two days
So today was my little girl's first Christmas. After taking about 15 minutes of video and frame grab snap shots on my Pixel (unlocked, but not yet rooted) we moved on to other things only to find that neither the video or the pictures were saved.
I have to assume that these are sitting in temp files somewhere. Anyone have any suggestions?
There is a small thread going on the Pixel support forums on the topic but not much in the way of support traction.
Pixel: video recorded but not saved
My wife is near devastated.
Thanks to all.
harrybauls said:
So today was my little girl's first Christmas. After taking about 15 minutes of video and frame grab snap shots on my Pixel (unlocked, but not yet rooted) we moved on to other things only to find that neither the video or the pictures were saved.
I have to assume that these are sitting in temp files somewhere. Anyone have any suggestions?
There is a small thread going on the Pixel support forums on the topic but not much in the way of support traction.
Pixel: video recorded but not saved
My wife is near devastated.
Thanks to all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really hate to hear that. Hope you find them.
If there was no error message, then you may be OK. Did you touch the Albums icon at lower right in the Photos app (as opposed to Photos)? Depending on how you configured cloud backup for the Photos app, pics and videos may not show up under the Photos icon.
quangtran1 said:
Really hate to hear that. Hope you find them.
If there was no error message, then you may be OK. Did you touch the Albums icon at lower right in the Photos app (as opposed to Photos)? Depending on how you configured cloud backup for the Photos app, pics and videos may not show up under the Photos icon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. No error messages. No sign of the video or photos in either the Photos app (albums or main photos area) or the camera's built in gallery browser. This is the first time this has ever happened in the 2 months I have owned this phone or in the years of android phones I have had.
harrybauls said:
Thanks. No error messages. No sign of the video or photos in either the Photos app (albums or main photos area) or the camera's built in gallery browser. This is the first time this has ever happened in the 2 months I have owned this phone or in the years of android phones I have had.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really sucks to hear that this happened.
Maybe someone should test for bug that happens with long length videos.
That's the only thing I can think of as to why it happened.
deadgiveaway said:
Really sucks to hear that this happened.
Maybe someone should test for bug that happens with long length videos.
That's the only thing I can think of as to why it happened.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks.
It was a longer length (15-20 minutes) with multiple pauses and frame grab photos along the way. Both the video and frame grabs were lost. I'm not entirely sure if I even exited the app as I took a number of photos after I took this video and they were fine.
It doesn't seem to be a common issue but sadly I'm not the one who has posted this to Google's support form and had this happen on their kid's first Christmas.
I'm experiencing an unusual problem on my Google Pixel; pictures that are over 3 months old are disappearing from the phone of their own volition.
Google photos still has them,I'm not asking how to get them back,I want to find out if anyone else has the issue and ask for ideas on how to figure out what's going on.
It's not just photos taken on the camera either,there's other folders I now know have missing pictures that were downloaded from the internet. It only seems to affect pictures,I'm not missing other document types that are over 3 months old AFAIK.
It's taken a while to confirm it's not anything I'm doing by accident, this looks to be happening on its own. I'm currently testing to see if it's an exact number of days this happens after.
Has anyone else seen this?
I think there's an option somewhere that removes photos from your phone once they're synced to the Google photos. By any chance do you have this enabled?
phil.spence said:
I think there's an option somewhere that removes photos from your phone once they're synced to the Google photos. By any chance do you have this enabled?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is correct.
Yep, I believe by default Google Photos removes things that are backed up when you're running low on space. I don't know if there's a setting anywhere to remove them after a particular amount of time - I just looked in Google Photos and the Pixel's Settings, and I didn't see a place where it specified an amount of time.
Have you ever handed over your phone to someone just so they can see the latest meme or the cool picture you took? I have made a way to do this without being concerned what they will do on your phone. With this app, they will only be able to see what you select.
Get it on the Play Store
Get it on Labs
How to use:
1) Make sure that you have some kind of lock screen. Pin, Password, Fingerprint, whatever
2) Go to your gallery, select some photos or videos and tap share.
3) Select the Secure Photo Viewer
And you are done! As soon as you press your lock button, the photos will pop up. Your friends won't be able to get into your phone until you unlock it again.
If you have any questions of feedback feel free to contact me in any way!
XDA:DevDB Information
Secure Photo Viewer, App for the Apps & Games
Contributors
GreeTech
Version Information
Status: Stable
Current Stable Version: 1.0
Stable Release Date: 2017-10-30
Created 2017-11-07
Last Updated 2017-11-07
Tested it briefly yesterday and it does exactly what it says it does. No complaints here!
Nice.
GreeTech said:
Have you ever handed over your phone to someone just so they can see the latest meme or the cool picture you took? I have made a way to do this without being concerned what they will do on your phone. With this app, they will only be able to see what you select.
Get it on the Play Store
Get it on Labs
How to use:
1) Make sure that you have some kind of lock screen. Pin, Password, Fingerprint, whatever
2) Go to your gallery, select some photos or videos and tap share.
3) Select the Secure Photo Viewer
And you are done! As soon as you press your lock button, the photos will pop up. Your friends won't be able to get into your phone until you unlock it again.
If you have any questions of feedback feel free to contact me in any way!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great app! It's quite a nifty feature for the occasional need for it. Nice work!
awesome idea! love it
Such an awesome idea. Well executed.
nice app and does its job.. :good:
This is..... The bomb ?
I've been looking for an app like this for years!! Thank you. Google's pinning idea isn't wrong but you're still able to use the complete app like close picture and browse through all folders of the gallery.
Maybe it is possible to integrate this into gallery so it is possible to choose to lock the chosen picture or the folder it is in.
This is what I've been looking for forever. Thanks a lotttttttt
I will try it.
I love the icon.
Can I share a folder?
truemagic said:
Can I share a folder?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting question. As far as I can tell you cannot share a folder in android. Still, the app will accept multiple pictures. I think that your gallery might support sharing all photos in an album. If not, you can still go into a folder/album in your gallery or file manager app and select all files there and share them. Most apps offer a way to select all files in the current folder. It should work as long only pictures/Videos are selected. Good luck and I would love to hear if it worked out.
appsogreat said:
I love the icon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! As an artistically really ungifted person it often takes me hours to make one. Luckily there are a lot of great free assets.
truemagic said:
Can I share a folder?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have taken a better look at this. Some file managers indeed allow you to share a folder, but they first create a zip file, which you can share with others. But as it isn't a picture, it won't work. Simply opening the folder and pressing select all will allow you to share all the pictures with the app and it will work.
For example Google Photos on the other hand indeed doesn't allow this as far as I know. You can use the multi-select feature to quickly select images, but there is no option to share a whole album, so you have to multi-select each photo. Even though you just have to hold down your thumb on the bottom of the screen and it will continue scrolling on it's own, this might take quite some time.
So the answer really depends on what you are using. If you let me know, I can try to find a better way.
Also, thanks to all of you my app skyrocketed to over 2 000 installs within 4 days! This is amazing!
I've tried the app on 3 different devices (Samsung, THL and Asus; 2x 4.4.2, 1x 5.0). On all 3 the "folder sharing" worked fine when using each device's respective stock gallery app. I could even select multiple folders to share. (The only limitation seemed that the folder must not contain too many files. Folders with 300/500 (iirc) pictures could not be shared.)
When using Simple Gallery or QuickPic (old version) on the other hand, I could not find a way to share a folder.
Being able to quickly share a folder is really nice, I have to say. This would probably be my favorite usage scenario for this app.
One problem I do have tho, is that I find the app to be a bit too easy to dismiss. As soon as the home or back button is touched, it's back to the lockscreen. This could get a bit impractical, especially with not so tech-savvy people. If I hand the device to somebody who's not used to smartphones (yes, people like that still exist ) (or a kid) to view, let's say, 30 vacation pictures, it's almost guaranteed that at some point they'll accidentally touch home/return and thereby end SPV. Then they would have to hand the phone back to me, I'd have to unlock the phone, reselect pictures/folder, relock, and hand it back to them so they can view the rest of the pictures...
Imo it either should be a bit harder to leave SVP (like maybe having to double tap/long press home/return) or it needs an easier way back into the SVP-selected pics (without having to unlock).
Also I don't really get why there's an "or pin this app" option. Granted, I'm still mostly using Kitkat, so I'm not really that familiar with the pinning feature. But I was under the impression that your app is supposed to be a better alternative to pinning, so why include it??
(hope I didn't sound too negative here really no offense meant)
I can't even open mine
Fuxiz said:
I can't even open mine
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You need to go to your gallery and share a picture from there (or any other place that can share pictures). Besides facebook, whatsapp and so on there will be secure photo viewer.
GreeTech said:
You need to go to your gallery and share a picture from there (or any other place that can share pictures). Besides facebook, whatsapp and so on there will be secure photo viewer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah. Thanks
Krete said:
I've tried the app on 3 different devices (Samsung, THL and Asus; 2x 4.4.2, 1x 5.0). On all 3 the "folder sharing" worked fine when using each device's respective stock gallery app. I could even select multiple folders to share. (The only limitation seemed that the folder must not contain too many files. Folders with 300/500 (iirc) pictures could not be shared.)
When using Simple Gallery or QuickPic (old version) on the other hand, I could not find a way to share a folder.
Being able to quickly share a folder is really nice, I have to say. This would probably be my favorite usage scenario for this app.
One problem I do have tho, is that I find the app to be a bit too easy to dismiss. As soon as the home or back button is touched, it's back to the lockscreen. This could get a bit impractical, especially with not so tech-savvy people. If I hand the device to somebody who's not used to smartphones (yes, people like that still exist ) (or a kid) to view, let's say, 30 vacation pictures, it's almost guaranteed that at some point they'll accidentally touch home/return and thereby end SPV. Then they would have to hand the phone back to me, I'd have to unlock the phone, reselect pictures/folder, relock, and hand it back to them so they can view the rest of the pictures...
Imo it either should be a bit harder to leave SVP (like maybe having to double tap/long press home/return) or it needs an easier way back into the SVP-selected pics (without having to unlock).
Also I don't really get why there's an "or pin this app" option. Granted, I'm still mostly using Kitkat, so I'm not really that familiar with the pinning feature. But I was under the impression that your app is supposed to be a better alternative to pinning, so why include it??
(hope I didn't sound too negative here really no offense meant)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was away for a long time and also needed some time to look into the folder sharing, but I couldn't find a solution that works on newer versions on android. The home button also can't be overridden for security reasons, but there is definitely something I can do to make it relaunch after closing, or at least offer the user an option to do so.
App pinning solves this too, as a pinned app can't be closed by the home or back button. So if you pin an app, you basically can use only this app unless you unpin it and unlock the device. If you pin your gallery, others can still go back and look at other pictures because it's the same app (gallery). If you pin the SPV instead, they won't be able to see anything else as they can only access the SPV and it only shows the selected photos.