Google can share your conversations to someone else?
Okay, Google…Are you listening?
Funny thing is that Google is always fucking listening. And if you have Google Assistant in your house, well, throw it away or crush it. Why? Because fuckers not only use your search data for a better advertisement profile, but can also use your audio files for new technology development.
Not everyone is aware of the fact that everything you say to your Google smart speakers and your Google Assistant is being recorded and stored. But that is clearly stated in Google’s terms and conditions. And what people are certainly not aware of, simply because Google doesn’t mention it in its terms and conditions, is that Google employees can listen to excerpts from those recordings.
VTR NWS was able to connect with a Google subcontractor, who let them take a look at the system that collects audio via Google Assistant. Thousands of employees worldwide use this system to listen to audio excerpts. In Flanders and Holland, around a dozen people listen to Dutch recordings. And of course the information in the recording is absolutely
So why the hell is Google storing these recordings and why does it have employees listening to them? Frankly they don’t give a shit what you are saying, but the way you are saying it. Google’s computer system consists of smart, self-learning algorithms. And in order to understand the subtle differences and characteristics of the Dutch language or any other yet not used, it still needs to learn a lot.
Sometimes Google’s search engine has difficulty analysing a certain speech command. When that is the case, they put this command in Google’s online tool Crowdsource. Google subcontracts that task to outside professionals. They log in to a secure part of the tool that has a list of the audio excerpts they have to analyse.
Speech recognition automatically generates a script of the recordings. Employees then have to double check to describe the excerpt as accurately as possible: is it a woman’s voice, a man’s voice or a child? What do they say? They write out every cough and every audible comma. These descriptions are constantly improving Google’s search engines, which results in better reactions to commands.
Knowing that people who work for Google indirectly are listening to such recordings raises questions about privacy. In order to avoid excerpts being automatically linked to a user, they are disconnected from the user’s information. They delete the user name and replace it with an anonymous serial number. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recover someone’s identity; you simply have to listen carefully to what is being said. Most recordings made via Google Home smart speakers are very clear. Recordings made with Google Assistant, the smartphone app, are of telephone quality. But the sound is not distorted in any way.
Google is not the only fucker that works this way. In April, the Bloomberg news agency revealed that American internet giant Amazon also does it. Bloomberg also had evidence that, just like Google, Apple subcontracted people to train its well-known Siri search assistant.
So next time you want your lazy ass to google something, you can either type it down yourself or try using a new search engine. Yes, they do exist and yes, they work. The question is are you willing to live without all the Google products. Guess not.