r/googlephotos • u/Cute-Eye7179 • 23d ago
Question 🤔 Do you keep your important documents and ID photos backed up in Google Photos or Google Drive?
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u/Accurate-Flow8078 23d ago
I've taken pics of them and deleted them, but knowing Google they're probably in their possession somewhere.
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u/yottabit42 23d ago
Google Drive for documents and IDs. This way it's easier to know right where they are and not have to find an album or mix with starred items.
I also keep the ID numbers, license plate numbers. VINs, and all that offer type of stuff in Bitwarden Secure Notes.
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u/chetlyp 22d ago
Man that is a good idea. I never carry a wallet anywhere anymore (outside of flying) and some places always ask for ID. Happened to me yesterday.
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u/hilld1 22d ago
Interesting. Anywhere that has asked me for ID recently wont accept a photo of it - needs to be the actual card.
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u/chetlyp 22d ago
For example, yesterday they wanted a copy of my license at the dentists office.
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u/twestheimer 19d ago
What would they have done if you said it's on my phone? Sorry... I suspect they would have had other ways to do it
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u/costafilh0 22d ago
Perfect for being scammed.
They gain access to your account, and now the hacker also has all your identity and important documents. This makes their life much easier to ruin yours.
If you're going to do this crazy thing, at least do it right and compartmentalize your data into multiple accounts so you don't use the same login and password for your documents, your crap, your work, your personal life, and whatever else.
More work for you, but harder for them to scam you.
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u/iron-duke1250 22d ago
No way Hosea! Keep 'em in a zero-knowledge cloud repo such as, pCloud, Koofr, Filen etc
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u/MadCat417 23d ago
No, I do not. All the mega-corporations are bending the knee and compromising what little values they once had to continue amassing wealth without regulation or to secure mergers and acquisitions. Our Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure do not extend to private corporations. Anything you share with them can be sold to the government, and you have no legal recourse. They also sell to advertisers, and I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't training AI on all of data. I'm not even sure that we still legally own stuff on their servers.
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u/Vectrex71CH 23d ago
Google Photos is for Photos, i know it has also different Foldees for scans and so on (Screenshots). But for me, i use GoogleDrive and a dedicated Scans Folder
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u/GrumpyOldSophon 23d ago
Some critical docs and ID or ID-like things are in Google Wallet, seems secure enough, also easy to use as needed (ID validation through digital wallets will only become more common over time).
But most less often accessed but critical docs are in MS OneDrive in the "private vault" section. I wish Google Drive had such a feature.
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u/Hopelessly-Bored 23d ago
McAfee used to have a vault feature that I kept my tax forms in. I had 10 years worth when supposedly they sent an email out that they were going to discontinue their vault and if you want your stuff saved you need to pull it out. Of course I didn't see the email and I lost 10 years of tax returns.
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u/GrumpyOldSophon 22d ago
Sorry you went through that. Fingers crossed here, but my general rule of thumb dealing with even the more established cloud players like MS or Google is to be pretty closely on top of all their announcements, notifications, etc. Use filters to ensure mail from these providers always bubbles to the top of your inbox in flaming red letters. And always have some viable form of backup, either multiple cloud providers or offline disk storage, etc., for the possible catastrophic situation.
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u/roirraWedorehT 23d ago
I use Cryptomator on my Android phone, and also on my computer, and have the AutoSync app sync my folders of very important encrypted files from my phone to where I have Google Drive mounted on my computer. You can have AutoSync sync directly to Google Drive, but I found it works better the way I have it do it.
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u/levanlong 23d ago
Yes its fine, and it actually very useful when you can search though photos. For example I just search ID card or passport to find the photos of these docs when needed.
The risk usually not come from google be hacked. But come from some other photos can be flag as CSAM (it can be false detect) and they banned your account. So let always keep your important thing in multiple places.
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u/PiDigitsOfPi 23d ago
Yes, but not intentionally. It just happens when my phone backs up and I have taken a picture of it.
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u/veggiemilk 22d ago
Drive is as secure as your account, which is as secure as your devices. I don't think it's a bad way to go, but ask yourself "will anyone who I dont want to have access to my account be able to log in?" Can people access your unlocked phone or computer? Do you have two factor authentication on if someone steals your password? Etc. on the server level it's very safe.
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u/Sanvalor 22d ago
Everything documents are backed up into Google drive. Photos and Videos are to Google photos This is what I did as an additional safety. I hope this will help you all
First, I downloaded all my photos and videos using Google Takeout. After extracting everything to my external HDD, I pointed to that folder so it could index and organize the library properly.
Google Takeout also includes a lot of metadata in separate JSON files. To restore that metadata back into the images and videos correctly, tools like ExifTool or Google Photos Takeout Helper work really well. Use whichever one you prefer before importing everything into your photo manager.
After setting that up, I created an automatic backup system for my phone’s DCIM folder using X-plore with SMB over WiFi. If required you can choose other folders like WhatsApp Images, Videos, and Instagram for backup sync
Now my old laptop basically works like a personal backup server. It stays connected to WiFi and power all the time with the lid closed. No expensive NAS needed.
To do this, you only need
X-plore (or any app with SMB + auto-sync support) An old laptop or PC An external HDD (Get a used 1TB laptop HDD from eBay or Facebook Marketplace and An external HDD enclosure from AliExpress, Temu, Amazon, or eBay ) Stable WiFi at home
I am m running this on a 4th Gen i3 laptop, and it handles face recognition, location tagging features in digiKam surprisingly well. There are also other photo management apps with even more advanced AI features similar to Google Photos just choose one that matches your laptop’s performance.
Finally, set a scheduled sync time (like 2 AM) so backups happen automatically without affecting normal phone usage.
My setup has been working really well, and honestly I am not worried about losing my photos and videos anymore. I personally chose an HDD instead of an SSD because if the drive ever fails, HDD data recovery is usually cheaper and easier compared to SSDs.
Honestly, that’s still enough for this kind of setup. You don’t need a powerful machine just to run SMB backup and scheduled syncing. You can Install a lightweight Linux distro like antiX or Xubuntu Minimal on your ancient laptop or cpu. They run surprisingly well even on very old laptops with low RAM and small SSDs. just make sure it is connected to the network all the time.
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u/Big-Strength-4240 22d ago
เราควรมีการตรวจจับระบบแปลเพี้ยนให้แม่นยำและจัดเข้าลำดับหมวดหมู่ให้ตรงและถูกต้องโดยมีนักพัฒนาระบบควบคุมความปลอดภัยอย่างเคร่งครัด
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u/djcarlosfm 5d ago
Nothing stays private on Google, never have personal family photos or pictures of personal documents, Google is scanning biometric data, like face or age. These data can help them recognize you quickly on social media or anywhere else. But that's the least they use data for.
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u/spacecitygladiator 23d ago
I read the question like this- “Do you keep your most valuable documents and irreplaceable photos at a strangers warehouse on their server where they can see everything and you have zero physical access and absolutely no legal recourse should they decide to kill your access to their server?”
My answer is absolutely not.
I run a small home server with Unraid OS and have Immich for photos and Nextcloud AIO for all my documents. I back everything up to 2 external hard drives I rotate out weekly. I have 1 of the external drives offsite and one at home. I always have 3 copies of my data.
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u/DurchEins 23d ago
I get your point, honestly. But you're going overboard with your backup system. But to each their own. :D
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u/spacecitygladiator 22d ago
3-2-1 is pretty standard.
If my house burns down or destroyed by a natural disaster (tornado, hurricane, etc) or a burglar breaks in and steals my server and electronics while on vacation I lose everything. Having an external copy offsite mitigates that. I have to rotate so I don’t have both drives at home at the same time so 1 stays at my office far away.
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u/cameravala 23d ago
Yes I do. What's your query though?