[fersarr]

So, basically if I have disabled cloud backups in google photos, this shouldn't affect me right?

[lrvick]

Do not send them via plaintext email, or a proprietary chat system. Also be aware that other corpo apps on your phone may harvest and back them up too or scan them in place. US cell carriers require extensive root access malware like OMA-DM toolkits that can be triggered to spy on anything on your phone at any time.

As long as you use proprietary software on your devices you will never be safe from this type of thing.

[loeg]

For now they don't scan the contents of your phone, yes. If that changes, potentially no.

[Herbstluft]

Aside from the fact that Google likes to randomly lock longtime users out of their accounts too sometimes, yes. Those cases happen unprompted.