Google workers listen to your “OK Google” queries—one of them leaked recordings

[Karlston]

Google Home voice recordings leak —

Google workers listen to your “OK Google” queries—one of them leaked recordings

News service identified Google users by listening to 1,000 leaked recordings.

Enlarge / The Google Home Mini, the original Google Home, and the Google Home Max.

Google

Google today defended its practice of having workers listen to users' Google Assistant queries, following the leak of 1,000 voice recordings to a media outlet. Google also said it will try to prevent future leaks of its users' voice recordings.

 

VRT NWS, a news organization run by a public broadcaster in the Flemish region of Belgium, said it "was able to listen to more than a thousand [Google Assistant] recordings" that it received from a Google subcontractor.

 

Google Assistant is used on Google Home smart speakers, Android devices, and Chromebooks.

 

"In these recordings, we could clearly hear addresses and other sensitive information," the VRT article said. "This made it easy for us to find the people involved and confront them with the audio recordings."

 

VRT said it "let ordinary Flemish people hear some of their own recordings" and that these people confirmed that the recordings contained their voices.

 

Google Home is supposed to record only when users say the "OK Google" or "Hey Google" trigger phrases. But VRT NWS said that 153 of the 1,000 recordings it listened to "were conversations that should never have been recorded and during which the command 'OK Google' was clearly not given." Recorded voices leaked to VRT included "bedroom conversations, conversations between parents and their children, but also blazing rows and professional phone calls containing lots of private information."

Google: Leak violated data-security policy

Google responded to the VRT story in a blog post today.

 

"We just learned that one of [our] language reviewers has violated our data-security policies by leaking confidential Dutch audio data," Google said. "Our Security and Privacy Response teams have been activated on this issue, are investigating, and we will take action. We are conducting a full review of our safeguards in this space to prevent misconduct like this from happening again."

 

Google has previously disclosed that it hires language experts to listen to recordings, and it defended the practice in today's blog post.

 

"As part of our work to develop speech technology for more languages, we partner with language experts around the world who understand the nuances and accents of a specific language," Google wrote. "These language experts review and transcribe a small set of queries to help us better understand those languages. This is a critical part of the process of building speech technology and is necessary to creating products like the Google Assistant."

 

We asked Google today if its internal employees also listen to the recordings. A company spokesperson answered "yes" and added that "we apply a wide range of safeguards to protect user privacy throughout the entire review process (both internally and with our affiliates)."

Users can disable saving of voice activity

Amazon, Apple, and Google all have workers listen to smart-assistant recordings, Bloomberg wrote in April. Google acknowledged to Business Insider at the time that "We conduct a very limited fraction of audio transcription to improve speech-recognition systems."

 

Amazon recently confirmed that it stores Alexa conversations until customers delete them.

 

Google's blog post today said it uses "a wide range of safeguards to protect user privacy throughout the entire review process."

 

Google users can disable the saving of voice activity and other types of personal information at Google's activity controls site, where they can also delete past recordings. More information on how to manage and delete Google Assistant data can be found at this Google help page.

 

"Language experts only review around 0.2 percent of all audio snippets," Google said. "Audio snippets are not associated with user accounts as part of the review process, and reviewers are directed not to transcribe background conversations or other noises and only to transcribe snippets that are directed to Google."

 

The company also said that Google Assistant "only sends audio to Google after your device detects that you're interacting with the Assistant." But Google acknowledged that sometimes its software "misinterprets noise or words in the background," leading to "false accepts" in which people's voices are recorded when they aren't trying to use Google Assistant.

 

Google told Ars that the storing of voice and audio activity is set to "off" by default when people create Google accounts.

 

"You must opt in to have your audio recordings stored to your account, and Voice and Audio Activity is not required to use the Google Assistant," Google said. "We disclose that Voice & Audio Activity (VAA) can be used to improve speech systems and in Google's privacy policy, we also explain that we provide personal information to trusted businesses to process for us. If you do opt in, you can set your account to auto-delete Assistant history after every 3 months or every 18 months. Or you can manually delete it yourself."

 

 

 

Source: Google workers listen to your “OK Google” queries—one of them leaked recordings (Ars Technica)

[steven36]

Google Very Angry After Contractor Leaks Over a Thousand Assistant Recordings

 

 

Just in case you were holding out any hope that Google didn’t let humans listen voice recordings from Google Home and Google Assistant, stop doing that. One of the humans that Google hired to review voice recordings recently leaked over a thousand Assistant recordings to a Belgian news organization, which published a story and video about the recordings this week. Google, of course, is very pissed about this.

 

The Flemish news report is quite something, mainly because you can actually hear a whole bunch of Google Assistant records from anonymous Flemish people. We’ve long known that Google employs humans to review and transcribe voice recordings in order to train the technology that makes the voice assistant work. (Amazon and Apple have admitted to doing the same thing, and we’ve previously reported on the uncomfortable truth about why humans are still necessary for voice assistants to work.) Unfortunately for Google, one of these humans sent a large cache of these recordings to VRT News in Belgium, and the news organization. The person, who works as a subcontractor for Google, also let the journalists look at the software they use to review the recordings. The report confirms what we already knew, but hearing the recordings is a vivid reminder that stuff you say to a voice assistant is recorded, stored, and inevitably at risk of being leaked to hackers, governments, or Belgian news organizations.

 

Google fired back on Friday with a blog post that frames the leak as a security breach. The company explained the review process as something that’s necessary for its products to work well in multiple languages, though the same review process exists for Assistant recordings in English. Inevitably, the blog reads like a scolding:

We just learned that one of these language reviewers has violated our data security policies by leaking confidential Dutch audio data. Our Security and Privacy Response teams have been activated on this issue, are investigating, and we will take action. We are conducting a full review of our safeguards in this space to prevent misconduct like this from happening again.

It also goes on to confirm that “around 0.2 percent of all audio snippets” get sent to human reviewers. That seems like a small number until you remember there are 1 billion devices that can query Google Assistant.

 

What’s most concerning about this glimpse into what makes Google Assistant work, however, is the simple fact that many recordings happen by accident. Google Assistant and other voice assistants are supposed to start recording only after the user says a wake word or phrase, like “Hey Google.” However, the Belgian news report says, “VRT NWS listened to more than a thousand excerpts, 153 of which were conversations that should never have been recorded and during which the command ‘Okay Google’ was clearly not given.” That means maybe 10 percent of what Google is recording is stuff it’s not supposed to record.

 

So it’s unclear what happens next. Perhaps some people will be a little bit more cautious around their Google Home or their Amazon Echo or Apple HomePod, all of which amount to wiretapping devices according to some privacy experts. This analogy does make more and more sense as we learn about how these devices work. A Google Home does have microphones that are on by default and that, sometimes, record audio without your explicit consent. And then those recordings get sent to a subcontractor who might just get an itch to leak the recordings to the press. That has now happened.

 

Another possible outcome, of course, is that you just throw your Google Home or your Amazon Echo or your Apple HomePod into the ocean, scream at the clouds, and cry into the sand. Maybe this future isn’t the one you wanted or hoped for, but it’s the one you have to live in.

 

Source

 

[xpkRAKE]

Every day I hate google just a little bit more....they`re like a modern day technological plague.

[tivstip]

hope mark schrems will f*** them for good this time

[Infinite_Vision]

I was anti Apple for a long time but this past year, my eyes have seen the evil------>"Google."  I felt like my personal emails and account were listen in by them even though I did nothing wrong.  I just bought every day items.  So now, I will no longer use Android phone, their Chrome browser, gmail, Google search engine, etc.  I'm using alternatives at the moment.  I am waiting on the FCC to break this monopoly up so that YouTube is view as a utility.      

 

Got rid of Facebook a year ago.  FB = Lifelog.  Look it up.

Yahoo = Lifelog.  Look up their new Company called "Oath."  Read their new privacy statement.  They can read your email now in their new privacy statement. 

Google. " Google admits workers listen to virtual assistant recordings ."

 

Your phone is your enemy now.  Each ping goes to a cell tower and they can track and trace your every steps.  So turning off the GPS doesn't help at all.  This is exactly what the book of Revelation in the Bible talks about.  The end time.  Don't take my words for it, do your own research and try to find your truth.  Money is moving into the digital realm.  And if they don't like what you think, they can also ban your digital currency account in the future.  Or zero out your account.  That is my prediction for the future.  That is why FB is trying to start Libra. Whoever controls the money controls the system.  Money + Your data = Their power.