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How to listen to (and delete) everything you've ever said to Google
- joosters 11y agoThe title is misleading; as the article reveals, you can't delete the recordings, all you can do is ask Google to not tie them to your identity. (and hope that they actually do that...)
- voyou 11y agoYou can delete them (or at least, request that Google delete them); either by selecting the checkbox next to each recording, or by choosing "Delete options" from the vertical-line-of-three-dots icon in the top right. What it looks like you can't do is ask Google not to keep anonymized recordings of voice searches etc that you make in the future.
- feld 11y agoseems more reasonable then to leave them as-is and regularly delete them :)
- josso 11y agoEven then, you don't really delete the recordings, you just delete the link between your account and the recording. As the article points out, the only way to stop Google from having any voice data on you (anonymized or not) is to stop using their voice features.
- feld 11y agoHmm good point. I overlooked that fact.
- joosters 11y agoSorry, didn't realise that. I did visit the page but the checkboxes weren't there as I had no recordings.
- btian 11y agoSo you have no recordings, and you claim Google doesn't allow you to delete recordings... I guess you're technically right, Google doesn't let you delete things that don't exist.
- bcoates 11y agoRemember that as the AOL search history leaks showed us, the anonymization is a fig leaf and it's not terribly challenging to re-associate a complete search query history with a person -- even without identifying the voice.
- tonfa 11y agoDidn't the AOL dump still have a per user id for each record?
- tefo-mohapi 11y agoThanks for this. Good to know.
- Balgair 11y agoHmmm, all off as it was. Thanks past me for doing that.
- junto 11y agoMine all say "paused" under "Activity Controls" [1] Out of interest, why does Google use the term "paused" rather than "off"? It makes me suspect that they are still saving it, but just hiding the fact that they are doing so from me. Or am I just paranoid? Update: The end of the article outlines this a bit better: Turning voice Activity off doesn’t stop Google storing your recordings, but it means they get kept with an anonymous identifier, and can’t be easily linked back to your account. If you want to stop Google recording your voice at all, well, there’s only one solution: stop talking to it. [1] https://www.google.com/settings/accounthistory?continue=https://history.google.com/history/audio%3Futm_source%3Dsidenav https://www.google.com/settings/accounthistory?continue=http...
- scott_karana 11y agoI suspect a bit of it is psychology, too. If it's "Paused", it implies that it's usual to be enabled, both as peer pressure and for features/usability.
- rvijapurapu 11y agoGoogle knowing a bit about me & my voice is little scary, but hearing my 8yr old daughter ask about the cosmos & other scientific questions on Google, is to me, priceless.
- akiselev 11y agoAny chance you are willing to share the content of some of those questions (not the recording, just the questions)? I've seen little kids ask me and other adults about what a cordless phone was (even "why does it have so many buttons?" from the young owner of an iPhone who failed to grasp the idea of a screen without touch input), why they can't interact with the cover of a magazine by poking at it, and why we can't just take pictures of bacteria with a smartphone camera instead of looking through a microscope. I'm curious what a child would ask Google and what the answers would be given the vastly different expectations each generation has of every day technology. I have really bad experiences with voice recognition going all the way back to early Dragon Naturally Speaking versions and I can't imagine asking google voice search a question so instead I always just text search for relevant topics or go on the science exhanges/forums.
- rvijapurapu 11y ago@akiselv: Some of the questions my daughter has asked: > how does an earthquake happen > when was the first Christchurch earthquake > what are the well known constellations > how big is cat VY Canis Majoris > what is the biggest star > how old is Pluto > what is Fusion > how was the sun formed This is from one session.
- shostack 11y agoAnd your daughter is only 8? Damn, nice job on the parenting. Might I ask what you've done as a parent to help get her to the point where she's asking these sorts of questions?
- rvijapurapu 11y ago
- xirdstl 11y agoThe first thing the article says is that users are probably aware Google stores all of these recordings. I, for one, was not aware. Am I really in the minority?
- oniMaker 11y agoOf course not. Most people don't even think about this stuff.
- Florin_Andrei 11y agoWell, I don't know. A typical HN reader should not be surprised by this. You know technology, you know how Google operates, it should be fairly obvious that they store everything, forever. When I saw the article, my reaction was "hey, thanks for letting me know what the link actually is". I was not surprised at all by it. I sort of expected it.
- OJFord 11y agoI assumed they did something to improve matching, but I never imagined they stored the 'raw' (as in actual voice, albeit probably compressed) recordings.
- MichaelGG 11y agoYou might know something when thinking about it but never have been aware of it. "Oh yeah, I guess all this time they must have been doing that."
- xirdstl 11y agoSo they store Google hangout video chats forever?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nadaviv 11y agoI was not aware of this until a couple days ago, when I stumbled upon that (OP) article. Surprisingly, though, my privacy settings were already configured to not keep these recordings.
- jlarocco 11y agoGees, Google is creepy. This might be the tipping point that makes me finish my switch off Google and move my email to something else. Fortunately, I haven't used this, but God only knows what else they're saving forever that I haven't managed to avoid or turn off.
- Laaw 11y agoPlaying with Maps one evening led me to find that at one point I had enabled some kind of tracking, and every single day of my movement was graphed in Maps. Where I went and how long I was there was recorded by Google. I should do something with this data...
- mafuyu 11y agoThere's a neat site where you can turn your location data into a heatmap: https://theopolis.me/location-history-visualizer/ https://theopolis.me/location-history-visualizer/
- toomuchtodo 11y agoGoogle's version: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline https://www.google.com/maps/timeline
- cproctor 11y agoI just had a look at the information Google has been keeping on me, and noticed that when I visited the visitor center for Zion National Park earlier this year, there was a photo of my car's license plate was associated with the event. Any ideas what's going on here?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoIf the photo was taken with an Android device, and uploaded to Google Photos, most likely Google associated your location with the GPS coordinates in the EXIF data of the photo. I was at Zion a few weeks ago, and did not see any equipment on the road or in the parking lot that was automatically capturing license plate data, if that's what you're asking.
- shostack 11y agoWhere did you see the photo exactly? Was it a close-up of your license plate?
- 11y ago
- ByronicHero 11y agoQuestionsIAskMyPhoneWhileDrunk.ogg
- jvolkman 11y agoAmazon does the same thing with Echo recordings.
- scott_karana 11y agoLink?
- sib 11y agoAmazon's pretty clear about handling / management of Echo/Alexa voice data. FAQ: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602230 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... View Dialog History: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602040 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
- scott_karana 11y agoThank you! :-)
- martin-adams 11y agoNow if only they would let me see all my past Google searches and known web sites they think I've visited, then that would be interesting.
- lygaret 11y agohttps://history.google.com/history/ https://history.google.com/history/ Search history, and chrome browsing history, both from the desktop and Android.
- ak4g 11y agoIf you're using Chrome, have it authed to your google account, and have browsing history enabled in your sync settings, it's all here: https://history.google.com/history/ https://history.google.com/history/ I find it invaluable.
- maaku 11y agohttps://history.google.com/history https://history.google.com/history
- Animats 11y ago"Turning voice Activity off doesn’t stop Google storing your recordings, but it means they get kept with an anonymous identifier, and can’t be easily linked back to your account." "Off" is the new "on". The Direct Marketing Association's definition of "not tracking" is similar.
- callesgg 11y agoWhile i knew that google saves my location, i have explicitly told it i can. That fucking map scared my god. Not sure how it got all those locations some of them makes sense i used google maps in my iphone or i caried my Android tablet with me. Some of them seams to be based on to me unknown sources. I do not like being tracked when i dont know how it is done.
- stvswn 11y agoDo people generally like that this UI exists, or not? To everyone who says "wow that's creepy, I wish I had known, God knows what else they have-" do you feel better or worse seeing this UI available, and having the option to turn off services or remove specific records? I'm honestly curious, because Google is obviously trying to react to the "transparency" criticism. I also wonder who would be offended by a UI that gives you a method to stop using the services you find creepy. Seriously, you can opt out, it explains how pretty easily.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoAs someone generally critical and untrusting of Google, I assumed if you asked Google to delete your voice recordings, they actually did delete it. Kinda amazed that they don't.
- tianlins 11y agoOne way to think about this is you record a piece of voice and put it in Google drive. Sounds less creepy to me.
- swampthinker 11y agoDecided to listen to some of my recordings. What seemed off to me was that it also records myself saying "OK Google". Meaning that the mic is always on. Do they store audio outside of me calling for Google?
- hiddencost 11y agoThey buffer the audio in a ring buffer constantly, so that the audio can be checked for a wake word. If the wake woRd triggers, then they send the contents of the buffer. The buffer shouldn't be super big. (E.g., one or two seconds). They use it to train their wake word model.
- steve371 11y ago"This call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurances or training purpose. Your information is confidential and protected by the law." Call centers do that long time ago. And our voices are stored and used globally. I wish they have a delete button too.
- donatj 11y agoI did not know they were keeping this crap, but it's kind of neat I can hear myself getting directions to the bakery on my wedding day to pick up the cake (donuts).
- mkhalil 11y agoI'm more surprised they managed to even get Material-UI to pages like this. Their UI/UX team is doing something right.
- ikurei 11y agoOther comments say that these recordings are unlinked from your account after some time (6 months for apple) or you turn this feature off. In a previous HN [1] post we learned that third parties can listen to these anonymized recordings to improve the system, and there are actual humans listening to it... What just jumped to my mind is that, leaving aside how unique your voice can be, or how identifiable your behaviour and patterns are (hint: a lot), there are a lot of searches that reveal unmistakable and straight personal info. What about: "Hey phone, text [name of my special other] [naughty and quirky stuff]" I wouldn't care too much if someone listened to me ask for a Starbucks, but I certainly don't want anyone to listen to that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9101875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9101875
- Sven7 11y agoI dont like it either but most of this stuff already exists with them in email, texts, im's etc.
- mindcrash 11y agoDelete? There's this thing called soft-deletes. Things which get stored on Google (and Facebook for that matter) will never ever be deleted when you, the person which added the content, decides to do this. They can ofcourse, when they decide to free up storage space by actually deleting stuff which was already soft-deleted -- but given the price per gigabyte these days I bet this will never ever happen...