It's so much worse than the title makes out. To summarize, Google will override your privacy settings, and allow Gemini to read Messages and WhatsApp texts even if you had disabled it. And Gemini does not run locally, meaning your private, encrypted communication is sent to Google.
This all happens automatically, unless you caught Google's email in time, bothered to read it (we all have plenty of time to keep up with updates from all the corporate entities we have relationships with, don't we?), and took action to prevent it.
If I sold Google some data cables, and months later sent them an email "btw in 5 business days your cables will start sending all the data going through them to me, even though you specifically told me not to enable this feature, unless you re-disable it", I would go to jail for hacking.
Google (not that they are alone in this) has done this and similar so many times, I want their execs to go to jail. One CFAA felony for each affected phone. Nothing will change until execs start getting jailed, and I want to see them in jail. Not fined - jail. And it shouldn't start with a lawsuit and discovery, but an armed FBI raid - if it's appropriate for merely exposing email addresses [1], it's certainly appropriate for breaking into millions of phones and exfiltrating private texts. Yes, breaking into - that's what access without permission is, even if you were the one who built the door.
This all happens automatically, unless you caught Google's email in time, bothered to read it (we all have plenty of time to keep up with updates from all the corporate entities we have relationships with, don't we?), and took action to prevent it.
If I sold Google some data cables, and months later sent them an email "btw in 5 business days your cables will start sending all the data going through them to me, even though you specifically told me not to enable this feature, unless you re-disable it", I would go to jail for hacking.
Google (not that they are alone in this) has done this and similar so many times, I want their execs to go to jail. One CFAA felony for each affected phone. Nothing will change until execs start getting jailed, and I want to see them in jail. Not fined - jail. And it shouldn't start with a lawsuit and discovery, but an armed FBI raid - if it's appropriate for merely exposing email addresses [1], it's certainly appropriate for breaking into millions of phones and exfiltrating private texts. Yes, breaking into - that's what access without permission is, even if you were the one who built the door.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse_Security#AT&T/iPad_emai...