Google Admits Partners Leaked More Than 1,000 Private Conversations With Google Assistant (cnbc.com) 53
Google admitted on Thursday that more than 1,000 sound recordings of customer conversations with the Google Assistant were leaked by some of its partners to a Belgian news site. From a report: These conversations are used by companies such as Google and Amazon -- which takes clips from the Amazon Echo -- to improve voice responses from their smart assistants. They are supposed to be kept confidential. But Belgian news site VRT said on Wednesday that a contractor provided it with samples of these sound samples, which VRT then used to identify some of the people in the clips. It also examined the sorts of conversations that Google collects when people say "OK Google," into a phone or a Google Home product. Among other things, VRT heard customer addresses. Sources who talked to the publication also described hearing recordings of a woman in distress and people talking about medical conditions.
Google has now admitted the recordings were leaked. "We just learned that one of these language reviewers has violated our data security policies by leaking confidential Dutch audio data," Google product manager of search David Monsees said in a blog post. "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 now admitted the recordings were leaked. "We just learned that one of these language reviewers has violated our data security policies by leaking confidential Dutch audio data," Google product manager of search David Monsees said in a blog post. "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."
color me not surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
we knew they recorded everything. Therefore it can be leaked....
Still glad I don't have one....
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Still glad I don't have one....
But you have a computer, TV and a phone with microphone right? And the phone has a non user-removable battery, correct?
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None of those devices are recording audio as an interface tho. At least in my machines. Siri, Cortana, etc all get disabled on any machine I use.
I have literally never opened the google voice app in my phone on purpose but I have taken my phone over a dozen of times out of my pocket with the google recorder turned on without me telling it to.. Its not getting butt-dialed either, I have a password set so it can't got to menu while in my pocket
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I had google voice chew through my mobile data whilst listening to music on another device, just recording and sending everything. It listens a lot.
This story is interesting, clearly the police in that country are morons, ohh look, publicly disclosed criminal activity and they do NOTHING, well done and what happened was criminal and make no mistake. Apparently if a big corporation does it, it is legal, even if when all the rest of the citizens of a country do it, they would be prosecuted and earn a custodia
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You mean you click the checkbox that says "disable X"
That's not the same as it being actually disabled and not recording audio.
Do you have an Android phone? (Score:3, Informative)
Still glad I don't have one....
Do you have an Android phone? Those also have Google Assistant.
Administrative controls are never assured (Score:2)
Physical controls are hard so people use administrative controls (policies and instructions-- don't drive the forklift over 5mph versus a governor that restricts the speed.
I don't see why anyone should give a company a break if they could have used a physical control but opted for an administrative control. Since I used to jealously guard my SS number, I recall testing my companies assurance that their is firewall between their needs to have my Social Security number for paychecks and their request that I
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Well they *admit* to leaking 1,000 conversations *to partners*.
That means they probably leaked 10x as many in reality, and also that they probably keep billions of recording for themselves.
Why anyone would buy one of these devices from Google or Amazon after that is beyond me. But it'll happen: the best proof is, Google is freely admiting their fuck-up, obviously without any fear of repercussions. In a normal society, it would be the death of that division and legal consequences at the very least. Not anymo
Partners, 3rd parties, and vendors OH MY.... (Score:1)
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Wonder if they're still partners now? This further solidifies that you can't trust your data even with the likes of a giant like Google. They still have partners and 3rd parties you don't even know about that have access too...
The headline is wrong. It isn't "partners", it's "a contractor".
This is a dupe [slashdot.org].
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Perfect timing - almost (Score:2)
I was going to say, Twitter going down would be an awesome time to release some super bad news!
But Twitter appears to be back up, so I guess they missed the mark on that one.
Violated GDPR (Score:1)
If any end users were European, the GDPR fine is coming...
They don't even see the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh my goodness... Google thinks the problem is that the recordings were leaked to the media (by a whistleblower), rather than that they have the recordings in the first place.
Reminds me of when the US military kept getting in trouble for soldiers taking pictures of Iraqi detainees being tortured... their response was to ban soldiers from having cameras.
At this point, they may as well just go for the monocle and the long-haired cat...
Laws were broken (Score:1)