NYT: Parents Lose Google Accounts Over Abuse Image False Positives
At least two parents have reportedly lost access to their Google accounts because the company's system for detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) mistakenly flagged images they had taken of their children for medical purposes as depicting some form of abuse.
The New York Times reports(Opens in a new window) that one of the parents, a software engineer referred to only as Mark, took photos of his child's groin because "his son’s penis looked swollen and was hurting him." A nurse requested the photographs ahead of a video consult related to the issue.
The other parent said in a Quora post(Opens in a new window) discovered by the Times that he'd lost access to his Google account in February 2021 because he "took pictures of [his] son's infection in his intimal parts to send to his pediatrician who was following daily updates."
Both instances appeared to involve people with Android phones taking pictures of medical problems involving their child's groin that were automatically backed up to Google Photos and sent to someone else—significant others and medical professionals—via a variety of services.
Because the images were backed up to Google Photos, a Google system designed to detect CSAM flagged them. Upon review, the company deactivated the accounts and referred the cases to the CyberTipline at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The Times confirmed that both of the parents were cleared of any suspicion of abuse by investigators. Yet they still don't have access to his Google account, which in Mark's case caused a variety of problems that stem from the sheer ubiquity of the company's services:
"Not only did he lose emails, contact information for friends and former colleagues, and documentation of
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