Google Voice Search Records & Keeps Conversations You Have Near Your Phone
Google has the ability to record your most intimate conversations and store them in one of their data centers somewhere, and it may have been doing it for years, according to a new report.
The tech-giant has the ability to quietly record any conversations you have near your phone via its voice search, without you realizing, and simply talking is enough to activate the recordings, but thankfully, there’s a way to hear these recordings and delete them.
Google claims that it records and keeps your conversations as it helps them improve their voice recognition software, but the fact that they are recording and storing their user’s private conversations, largely without knowledge or real consent, is deeply worrying.
This news is raising some serious questions about how much of our privacy is being invaded by technology, especially since the recent statement from FBI Director, James Comey, who said, “I cover my webcam up and I advise everyone else should do the same.”
The Independent reports: The feature works as a way of letting people search with their voice, and storing those recordings, presumably lets Google improve its language recognition tools as well as the results that it gives to people.
But it also comes with an easy way of listening to and deleting all of the information that it collects. That’s done through a special page that brings together the information that Google has on you.
It’s found by heading to Google’s history page and looking at the long list of recordings. The company has a specific audio page and another for activity on the web, which will show you everywhere Google has a record of you being on the internet.
The recordings can function as a kind of diary, reminding you of the various places and situations that you and your phone have been in. But it’s also a reminder of just how much information is collected about you, and how intimate that information can be.
You’ll see more if you have an Android phone, which can be activated at any time just by saying “OK, Google”. But you may well also have recordings on there whatever devices you’ve interacted with Google using.
On the page, you can listen through all of the recordings. You can also see information about how the sound was recorded – whether it was through the Google app or elsewhere – as well as any transcription of what was said if Google has turned it into text successfully.
But perhaps the most useful – and least cringe-inducing – reason to visit the page is to delete everything from there, should you so wish. That can be done either by selecting specific recordings or deleting everything in one go.
To delete particular files, you can click the checkbox on the left and then move back to the top of the page and select “delete”. To get rid of everything, you can press the “More” button, select “Delete options” and then “Advanced” and click through.
