Sorry to hear what happened but not surprised. Some reasonable degree of privacy and control is still possible on a PC, though it is is becoming increasingly difficult with successive releases and updates of Windows. We won't even talk about OSX. But phones are a lost cause and have been for a long time. Effectively we get to choose Android or IOS. The design philosophy of both of them is that they know better than the user.
The only thing I can think of that you could do is jailbreak the phone and install a custom rom, which comes with its own set of disadvantages. You may also want to check the backups on Google and see if your folders have been preserved there, though I doubt it. Personally I don't leave things that I want to keep on my phone. I even backup my sms's and transfer photo's to my computer periodically.
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