Google promised to keep data from the phone calls private.
Don’t worry everyone, I’m sure all the voice data will be anonymized.
The company that sells your information to scammers has an idea on how to prevent them. What a load.
I already have a system where, if someone calls me, it’s probably a scam.
I literally ignore all unknown numbers. I also ignore the doorbell if I don’t expect someone or something. If it is important then just send me a letter.
One of the greatest moments in my life was when I was a young adult and realized I could just ignore someone at my door and leave them standing there. I didn’t invite your ass to just show up so fuck right off.
Phone calls too. You better ask via text or something first if you expect me to stop what I’m doing to listen to your bullshit. Voicemail? Oh no, I never completed the setup so you can’t leave a message. So sorry!
Uninvited visitors are the real world version of a pop up ad. They get zero consideration from me
God, everyone, read the article, please. The feature in question uses an on-device AI model, meaning none of the audio or transcript leaves the phone. If Google wanted to secretly record and steal your phone transcripts they could do so already. They wouldn’t need this feature.
Im sorry but are you high or something? You clearly understand enough about computers to know what those words mean, but you didnt even consider that google phones can do whatever they want with data thats “on-device”. Every device with google services has a root backdoor. Ofcourse they will gather all that data, because why wouldnt they? They can also gather it on demand, because it will surely get logged on-device and can be extracted at any time. The rules could also be changed at any time without warning to allow them to collect the data or start using it in whatever ways they want.
Also even if they wouldnt collect the data, its a fucking horrible idea in the first place. Sure lets outsource trust in our communications to some shitty machine learning algorithm that is dumber than a fucking toddler.
Before I get deeper into this argument, the main point I was trying to make is that people are clearly assuming based on the headline that the transcript analysis happens in the cloud, and aren’t aware of them at least claiming that it’s fully on-device. If Google wants to steal phone transcripts, they can do this already, this feature doesn’t change anything about it.
Also even if they wouldnt collect the data, its a fucking horrible idea in the first place. Sure lets outsource trust to an algorithm that is dumber than a fucking toddler.
The privacy discussion aside, the feature is designed to step in and warn the user when it detects a likely scam in progress. I don’t see how this is inherently a bad idea at all. My grandma got scammed on the phone hardcore a few years back — this likely would’ve prevented it. And “outsourcing trust to an algorithm” is clearly not what’s happening here. People get scammed all the time, clearly more needs to be done to stop scams.
Other than this… I know that people especially here are super wary of google and their privacy-related claims for very good reason. I am too. I know this is a very sensitive topic. But realistically, for this particular discussion…
“Ofcourse they will gather all that data, because why wouldnt they?”
There are so, SO many reasons why a massive company like Google, especially one that is constantly under scrutiny for their privacy practices, wouldn’t secretly record / analyze / store / whatever private phone conversations and tbh most probably just aren’t. There is immense regulation around this topic in practically all markets they operate in. If Google was found straight up sending transcripts of phone conversations to their servers without very explicit consent (aka more than some clause in ToS somewhere) it’d realistically be the biggest scandal in Google’s history, and likely significantly hurt, if not kill, at least their phone division. In many markets just the recording of phone conversations is already illegal without consent from both sides, and Google can’t just do it anyway based on some ToS legalese — it’s just illegal.
I’m not trying to say that I don’t believe they do this because they’re good people or anything, but because from a pure business standpoint it’d be immensely risky for gathering data that is also hardly usable in practice due to how sensitive it is. The circle of people that would even be allowed to know of its existence internally would have to be tiny and extremely trusted to prevent leaks.
The truth is that they can amass so much data through other potentially dubious yet totally legal ways already, so an immense and illegal overstep of privacy convention like this is just unnecessary.
Google exists to make money off of you. Unless you are actually paying them, you are the product. It’s that simple.
Take with a grain of salt any claims they make about you regarding services they will offer you for free.
Paying for a product doesn’t mean you are not the product. Corpos will double dip when they have the option.
Modern cars collect huge amounts of data on their drivers despite the company making money from selling the car. Stores will sell your purchase history to advertisers. You can’t trust any one with data about you.
Yes, excellent point. Realistically we should trust no one who stands to make money off of us, even if we are already giving them money.
