As an employee I can opt into having my Home recordings reviewed to improve quality. I’ve never heard about this being done for regular users.
Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
421–430 of 463 posts
Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
#422What is often the most disturbing about these revelations is that these are contractors, who have that amount of access...
Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
#423"(...) honey, what's our card number? 123 (...)"
"(...) honey, what was the password? 123 (...)"
"(...) honey, i got us 10 first bitcoins, we need to printout mnemonic 123 (...)"
Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
#424"The man, who wants to remain anonymous, works for an international company hired by Google. " So not a Google employee at all, a probably low paid contractor who is in possession of thousands of audio files. Your privacy matters, except when the bottom line is involved.
Does it matter how much they're payed? They're probably payed the right amount relative to the work they are doing. Also how is having access to small samples of audio a privacy issue? Are they also receiving enough information to attach an identity to the audio clips? How long are the clips? Are they randomly assigned to humans? Do those humans get to listen to multiple clips from the same Home device and can they t…
You can say password, credit card number, bitcoin/ethereum mnemonic in 1 minute without problem, can't you?
Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In my case, at least, I have no such functionality enabled How do you know? Is your device _incapable_ of performing that task, or did you just click a checkbox somewhere? Because if you just politely _asked_ the OS to disable it, it doesn't really matter, does it? We are back to the matter of trusting the vendor. > (in fact, they likely couldn't, because I don't have automatic updates turned on) So you say. The so…
Yes, but there's still a difference from what we are worried might be doing with our smartphones, and what we KNOW they are doing with 'voice assistants'. I turn off voice assistant on my smartphone and don't have any google home/alexa devices either. I have a TV with no voice activation. I won't use voice activation devices. Is it possible my phone is listening to my anyway and sending recordings to someone? It's po…
I'm in this camp
Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example, what’s to stop me from saying “Hey Google, I am Even more fun, if you call a bank, you often have to key-in your account number (which can be easily decoded if your phone sounds back the tones, which most do), then tell you name, your address and sometimes your other PII like Social Security number or part of it. Record that call and that's a complete identity theft package, nicely wrapped, just replay…
I'm not sure Google devices can make calls, but if they could, the only part that would be sent to Google (which is what these people would have to analyze) is "hey Google, call bank"
The Google Home can make phone calls in the US and UK.
Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Before I go further: do you own a smartphone? Someone really needs to make a decent modular smartphone with a detachable radio.
The Librem 5 has a kill switch for the radio: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
Oooh, a Debian derivative smartphone. I been wanting one of these to reappear in the wild ever since having a play with a Nokia N900.
Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Theres a mute button on the echo. You can turn voice off just the same as you can on a phone.
There's also the perma-mute button which you can activate by not buying one in the first place.
My kids left Alexa outside over a rainy weekend. Cest la vie!
Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
Theres a mute button on the echo. You can turn voice off just the same as you can on a phone.
> Theres a mute button on the echo. Which defeats the whole purpose of having it, namely, to respond to voice commands. > You can turn voice off just the same as you can on a phone. I don't have to turn off voice altogether on my phone, I just have to turn off the apps that I don't trust. On an Echo, either I turn it off and might as well not have it, or I turn it on and it's recording everything. There's no middle g…
> On an Echo, either I turn it off and might as well not have it, or I turn it on and it's recording everything. There's no middle ground where I get some basic functionality without being spied on.
I'd guess that most people could effectively find a middle ground by treating the Echo as if it were someone in a cordial but not really friends relationship with a family member, such as a classmate of one of you kids over to discuss a school project, or a member of your spouse's church over to discuss planning the annual church picnic.
If they are doing things that they would not mind such a person overhearing, have the Echo on. If they are doing things that they would not do until such a person leaves, have the Echo off.
It would be interesting to give these home voice assistants faces, including eyes that look at and track people it is listening to when they speak, to help people remember that it is still listening to them. That might make it easier to remember to turn it off before discussing sensitive things in its presence.
Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
Before I go further: do you own a smartphone? If not, you can ignore the rest. So, assuming you have a smartphone. That is a device which has: - Permanent network connection. Doesn't matter what you do on your Wifi, it has the cellular data network. Which is controlled by an independent processor with its own firmware - Excellent noise-cancellation microphones. They may not be able to pinpoint the sound source like a…
>Before I go further: do you own a smartphone? Someone really needs to make a decent modular smartphone with a detachable radio.
Do you mean the part where you can pull the Sim card out of the phone and reinsert it when you need to make a call?