Google creates secure file locker for countries where people often share smartphones

Google has added a secure file locker to the "Files" app that it offers as a clean-up service for Android owners, and suggested it as ideal for users who share a smartphone. Files cleans up seldom-used or unnecessary files on Android smartphones, or makes suggestions about sending them to the cloud to save storage space on a …

[Neil Barnes]

And yet, and yet...

Lots of easy storage on G's servers, but still no easy equivalent of 'kill -9' or the ability to delete certain supplier/manufacturer designated applications completely.

Surely one can only be sure of security/privacy if one can both be sure that an application not visible is actually not running, and that only applications you want to run are actually present on the machine?

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: And yet, and yet...

Quite so, Neil Barnes. Such invites CHAOS with Clouds Hosting Advanced Operating Systems with Virtual Machinery in AI Command and Control of/with ....... well, honestly, Futures, both Virtual and Physically Realised for Universal Presentation via Mass Media Documenting the Novel Means and Memes and Acquired Future Skills Required for Onward Further Greater Travails.

:-) Taking one into the Realms of Heavenly Tasks and Hellish Delights. A Perfumed Garden of Immaculate Desires

I would agree with you, NB, that an ACTive Control of that would be extremely advantageous ..... thus not to be severely disadvantaged in the Wakes of Any Current Running ACTivities able to Feature and Realise such as Results in All of that Above and the Much More Yet to Come.

As a Universally Resourceful Asset, Utterly Priceless ........ and a Right Pretty Penny worth every Red Cent Spent :-)

[karlkarl]

It is just another chance for Google to write "Secure" to mask the fact that the whole platform is absolutely criminally unsecure.

[RM Myers]

Yes

[Beeblebrox]

"Secure" to mask the fact that the whole platform is absolutely criminally unsecure.

insecure?

[Spock2]

users who share a smartphone

I assume they mean 'users who voluntarily share a smartphone'.

[Cliff Thorburn]

Or involuntarily with the NSA/GCHQ/other tentacle corporations et al ?

[Flywheel]

Risky

the risks of storing personal identity documents on a shared device

Given Google's penchant for denying access to your Google account for [insert whimsical reason here], I would have thought it was a bad idea to store documents you rely on for proof of ID in there. There's safe, and then there's safe...

[Beeblebrox]

Google's penchant for denying access to your Google account

Uh, so someone else has had:

"Sign-in attempt was blocked. Someone just used your password to try to sign in to your account. Google blocked them, but you should check what happened."

I thought it was just me (not). Every time my phone (running K9 mail) connects to a wifi hotspot; thunderbird similarly. Makes me want to dump google email; I keep putting it off, but I have no strong attachments to my google email addresses. Must soon realise this laziness costs me more effort.

[mdufrenoy]

Re: Google's penchant for denying access to your Google account

K9 is no longer supported (or has released no updates in years), has no support for OAuth (which Google will soon require), and ....

Give FairEmail a try: Open Source, well supported (constant updates), supports Android accounts on phone, blocks trackers, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm but not china.......

[newyork10033]

I am curious what is meant here by "secure". We know encrypted is not meant. Password protected even? Uploaded to your Google account on someone else's potentially rooted, keylogged phone observing passwords typed?