Mastodawn

Google continues the industry-wide trend of jamming AI down users' throats, making it difficult or impossible to opt out, and potentially endangering the privacy of communications: https://www.neowin.net/guides/google-can-now-read-your-whatsapp-messages-heres-how-to-stop-it/

Google can now read your WhatsApp messages, here's how to stop it

Google has released a feature that allows Gemini to access third-party apps, such as WhatsApp, even if you've turned off Gemini Apps Activity. Here's how to prevent that from happening.

Neowin

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👊🇺🇸🔥Jul 9

@evacide I've already removed Gemini via adb once. I'll do it again if it comes back after this forced opt-in.

I am not going to tell anyone that the Gemini app package is actually called com.google.android.apps.bard. I am also not advising anyone to follow these instructions:

1. Download and install ADB on your computer from the Android SDK Platform-Tools package

2. Enable Developer Options on your Android device:

3. Go to Settings > About phone > Software information

4. Tap "Build Number" seven times

5. Go to Settings > Developer options > USB debugging

6. Connect your Android device to your computer using a USB cable

7. Open Command Prompt or Terminal in the folder where ADB is installed

8. Verify the connection via command prompt or terminal by running the command: adb devices

9. Then run one of the two following commands:

adb uninstall com.google.android.apps.bard

adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.apps.bard

10. Then verify the package has been removed by running: adb shell pm list packages | grep bard

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Grant_H Jul 12

@Avitus @evacide any way to run adb via a a local shell? I just tried a local shell connectBot from FDroid, and that gives the following: adb (and ls!)

:/ $ ls
ls: .: Permission denied
1|:/ $ adb
/system/bin/sh: adb: inaccessible or not found
127|:/ $

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👊🇺🇸🔥

@grant_h @evacide I think this doesn't work because you need sudo access, which isn't natively available on Android. You'd need to root your phone to get sudo access, but rooting requires connecting to a computer anyway.

I prefer connecting to a computer so I'm not installing an app on my phone that claims it can root without a computer, but gives me malware instead 😅.