Ever-expanding cloud storage presents more risks than you might think

We continue from last week…

But beneath the surface, there were plenty of images that should never have been kept in the first place. For years, I had been keeping photos of passports — my own and those of friends who had sent me the details for booking trips. I found photos of the details needed to log in to my bank account. I was storing people’s addresses and screenshots of directions to their homes. The list goes on — private e-mail addresses, NSFW photos, screenshots of embarrassing conversations, common running routes and travel directions, pictures of notebooks from sensitive meetings. Huge swaths of my life were stored in my photos. I didn’t know they were there or had forgotten about them as soon as they weren’t useful.

Each of these presents a risk. While Google makes the vast majority of its profits from advertising — its privacy policy says it won’t show you personalised ads based on your photos — the company has a strong data security record. Successful hacks against the company are incredibly rare. However, each piece of data that you’re unnecessarily storing adds a little extra hazard if something does go wrong.

Documents could be used to assist with identity theft, while other personal details could contribute to building up a picture of who you talk to, where you live, and the places you frequent. Aside from any potential data breaches, my photos could potentially be accessed if my phone is lost or stolen. (These issues aren’t unique to Google Photos; they equally apply to any online photo storage service.)

But there are other reasons to spend some time clearing up your photos. Ever-expanding cloud storage makes it possible to keep taking photos and adding to the pile. Once sorted, it has been easier to find specific events and the best photos from them. If I had waited another few years the task would have been too daunting to even start. In another 10 years I may have taken an extra 20,000 to 40,000 photos. Now I plan on sorting the most recent photos once a year.

Plus, practically speaking, there’s now more space in my Google account. Before I started deleting everything, I’d used up around 80 GB of storage; I’ve decreased this to about 60 GB. Google has some tools to help you manage your photos: You can archive photos if you don’t want to delete them or keep them in your main photo library. And pictures can be siphoned off into albums — It was too late for me. Its storage management tools allow you to delete large photos and videos in bulk and get rid of screenshots and blurry photos. It’s also possible to free up some of your account’s space by shrinking the size of photos by dropping them to “storage saver quality”.

However, my obsession with organising my digital life — including operating a strict WhatsApp Zero policy — means that I would be fully satisfied with the job only if I did it manually. As I sifted through the tens of thousands of photos I’ve taken during two-thirds of my life, there was a satisfying glow to the process — a nostalgia vortex. Once I was done, I started taking more photos.