How to stop your Android phone backing up private photos to the cloud

Automatic backup is one of the best things a phone does. Lose the phone and your photos survive. But “everything, automatically” also means a copy of every private photo, screenshot and document scan sits in a cloud account, readable by anyone who gets into that account and, usually, by the provider. You can keep the safety of backup and still choose what goes up.

The steps follow the official help for the most common Android photo backup app. Phone makers’ own cloud services work on the same idea with different menus.

Backup works by folder

Android keeps photos in folders: the camera folder, Screenshots, a Downloads folder, and folders created by chat, editing and scanning apps. Your backup app uploads the camera folder and lets you choose which of the others to include.

To choose:

1. Open your photo backup app.
2. Tap your profile picture, then Photos settings, then Backup.
3. Tap Back up device folders.
4. Switch off each folder you don’t want uploaded.

The same screen may have a switch to back up new folders automatically. Turn that off if you’d rather decide folder by folder.

Good candidates to switch off:

• Screenshots, which collect codes, chats and bank pages. See where Android screenshots are saved.
• Chat app folders, which fill with photos other people send you. See stop chat apps saving photos to your gallery.
• Download and scanner folders, where ID and document scans often end up.

The camera folder

The camera folder is usually backed up whenever backup is on. To keep particular camera photos out of the cloud, move them out of the camera folder, ideally before backup runs:

• into your gallery app’s locked folder, with its backup switch off,
• into a folder that you’ve excluded,
• or into a vault app.

If the photo has already uploaded, moving it doesn’t remove the cloud copy. That’s the next step.

Remove what’s already uploaded

Stopping backup only affects future uploads. To remove existing cloud copies:

1. Open your backup account on a computer, where it’s easier to see what’s there.
2. Find the photos by date, or search.
3. Delete them, then empty the cloud trash.

Be careful: in many backup apps, deleting a backed-up photo also deletes it from your phone. If you want to keep a phone copy, move it somewhere safe first, or use an option that frees up only the cloud or only the device copy, where offered.

Turning backup off entirely

You can also switch backup off completely. That protects private photos from the cloud, but your ordinary photos lose their safety net. Most people are better served by backing up ordinary photos and keeping private ones out.

Whose keys protect the backup

Cloud photo backups are encrypted on the way and on the provider’s servers, but the provider usually holds the keys. Your password, any device signed in to the account, and the provider can all reach them. Is cloud photo backup encrypted explains the difference between that and end-to-end encryption.

Silo, coming soon to iPhone and Android, keeps imported photos in an encrypted vault that your phone’s photo backup doesn’t see. Silo’s own encrypted backup, arriving with launch for Pro, uploads the vault to your own cloud storage already encrypted on the phone, so the cloud holds only ciphertext.