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Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

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Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#221

Post by TeMPOraL »

joshuamorton wrote: post #197
tunap wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what I meant. You use PII to create whatever product(s) you sell to 3rds. I read the EULA over a decade ago. Good on Goog for stating it plainly. My answer is still, NO. Even when I go to .govs & other sites using Goog apis(UBO). More people would concur if they had an idea of how much all the minutia the SV giants(& the other alphabets)hoover up about our lives. And how it's used against us in daily…

> As for your red herring, I can only guess how mal-scans can be monetized. If anyone can do it, I have no doubt Goog will. Well yes, they're very clearly monetized: Google supplies a email service which it sells to businesses as part of GSuite. One of the selling points of this email service is spam protection. Is that a bad thing? > You use PII to create whatever product(s) you sell to 3rds. Ok, so if your concern…

The problem isn't just with companies having data, but with how they're using that data.

> whereas Google does, for example, let you delete the data it has on you and control collection of much of the data it collects

That's table stakes under GDPR. It's great that they do that, but it's still the bare minimum over here on the Old Continent. We can and should demand more.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#222

Post by jankiehodgpodge »

MiroF wrote: post #164
chaboud wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy enough to test, but I don’t really need to. Alexa Guard has had this functionality for a while, and I’d expect the folks here at HN to be able to infer a few things from the support link and basic reasoning. Support link https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028205592-Usin... So: 1) if an event is detected, you can listen to a 10 second clip or drop in (2-way call) to listen in or look. 2) Echo devi…

Why can't they just have full on-device transcription models? It's lossy, but extremely compressed.

Because they're cheap, low powered devices.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#223

Post by rossjudson »

tunap wrote: post #195
TeMPOraL wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the difference is that vast in practice. What's currently stopping evil actors from exfiltrating data from Google's PII through buying narrowly targeted ads, each time with slightly different targeting, and intersecting these results to build a more detailed picture of people who viewed the ads?

He/she is being deliberately obtuse & slippery. I believe their NDAs prohibit any kind of frank or unscripted conversations, you know, to protect the soulless citizen, Alphabet.

Are you talking about some kind of an "NDA" on employees? I work for Google. I am being frank when I say you are full of it, and you will not find this message in any script.

Shit, I fed a troll.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#224

Post by jankiehodgpodge »

feralimal wrote: post #49

How surprised would you be if in 5 years there was a Snowden-type revelation, that yes, the speakers and Facebook/Insta apps, Amazon echo, etc, etc, were listening all the time? Sorry. And that there was a secret court ruling that meant all that data was live-streamed to NSA Utah. Not surprised at all, is the answer.

I mean it's pretty easy to prove that's not true. Just stick it on a network and check the network traffic.

The bandwidth required to do that would be immense anyway for basically no benefit.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#225

Post by themacguffinman »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #152
croutonwagon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just dont have them in the house. Every now and then i get called paranoid. And sure, my phone can function the same (though i specifically have siri disabled on our iphones) Its just a cost benefit. I can get off the couch and flip a switch or use a remote to turn on a song. I really dont need speach recognition for those functions.

I unplug my parents' Google wiretap device when I enter the house for holiday parties. For some reason my parents can both know that I know way more about this topic than them, and still totally disregard me and spend hundreds on Google hardware devices because they seem cool. \o/

It's clear that your parents have different values from you regardless of what you tell them, an obvious point that seems to be lost on many commentators in this thread who perpetually oscillate between "you don't know what you're doing!" and "how could you use such a device?!"

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#226

Post by rossjudson »

marricks wrote: post #183
lern_too_spel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you told someone 2008 that the fun scrappy startup offering Gmail would be reading your emails Google explicitly stated their would read your emails to show ads next to them at launch. This was a surprise to nobody. > and only stopped It never stopped reading mail. How do you think searching your inbox or filtering spam work? In light of this, the rest of your post is pure conspiracy theory nonsense. Google was…

Wow, Google did lunch with ad scanning huh! I misremembered the controversy, I followed it closely at launch but that was loong ago. That does hurt my premise but I think it overall still holds: - Google did stop reading email for ads in 2017 as I said in an other post[1]. - Google does have a policy of innovate then monetize later. That was explicitly what they did with Google Maps - GMail was a good (but bit wrong…

Upvoting, because it's sadly quite rare to read "thank you for providing clarifying facts, and I shall appropriately update my opinions".

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#227

Post by dr_kiszonka »

jankiehodgpodge wrote: post #224
feralimal wrote: post #49

How surprised would you be if in 5 years there was a Snowden-type revelation, that yes, the speakers and Facebook/Insta apps, Amazon echo, etc, etc, were listening all the time? Sorry. And that there was a secret court ruling that meant all that data was live-streamed to NSA Utah. Not surprised at all, is the answer.

I mean it's pretty easy to prove that's not true. Just stick it on a network and check the network traffic. The bandwidth required to do that would be immense anyway for basically no benefit.

Is there a simple app that notifies users about changes in internet traffic patterns of IoT devices on their networks?

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#228

Post by teddyh »

take_a_breath wrote: post #218

I took all my moms hand-written recipes and made dithechef.com after she died. Never added any features. [1] http://www.dithechef.com/

On first glance, this looks like spam, but perhaps it was meant as a comment in this other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24091577

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#229

Post by mjangle1985 »

harha wrote: post #86

I had one of these when I worked for Google, I didn’t quite trust it though, so I had it in the bathroom to limit what my employer could listen to. Imagine discussing a product idea at home with friends, then having that stolen by an engineer at one of these companies (who figured out how to find the interesting conversations) for a promotion or new position. On a larger scale these might get hooked up with some adve…

There's an open-source project that attempts to limit what things like Google home and Alexa hear using a pi.

https://github.com/bjoernkarmann/project_alias

I'd never want an always on mic in my home but if I had to have it I'd be using this.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#230

Post by mjangle1985 »

imglorp wrote: post #70
feralimal wrote: post #49

How surprised would you be if in 5 years there was a Snowden-type revelation, that yes, the speakers and Facebook/Insta apps, Amazon echo, etc, etc, were listening all the time? Sorry. And that there was a secret court ruling that meant all that data was live-streamed to NSA Utah. Not surprised at all, is the answer.

Some are for certain. The Samsung TV's for example explicitly do it and they have advised you not to have private conversations where the TV can hear you. https://imgur.com/Phy1uzX

Welp I'm never buying a Samsung TV now.

Stinks cause when I sold TV's for a living I love their products.

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