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Another benefit is privacy, this eliminates an entire set of potentially personal data from being handed off to Google.
by penagwin 8y ago
Another benefit is privacy, this eliminates an entire set of potentially personal data from being handed off to Google.
- Someone1234 8y agoI'm unclear on if this moves the privacy needle. It says they do offline translation, but they still may attempt to send the audio clip to compare with the resulting text translation. It could be used to improve privacy, I just don't know if it will be used that way.
- penagwin 8y agoTo me it's clear that this is in it's early phases, and as it's only available on Pixel devices and not to the general public I think it's safe to say this is part of it's testing. However, as you said, if this is always a requirement then it doesn't affect privacy at all, which to me would be a real shame but this is Google after all. We just have to wait and see for now.
- usrusr 8y agoOn the other hand, when you can transcribe locally, uploading whole days worth of eavesropping would not cause a noticeable spike in traffic. I'd consider it more a lateral change than an improvement.
- gbrown 8y agoMy first thought as well. Typed from my s̶u̶r̶v̶e̶i̶l̶l̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ smartphone.
- gruez 8y agoinstall a firewall (there are root/no root) options) and block google keyboard's internet access.
- konart 8y agoWhat if the data is send by something other than keyboard though? :)
- ClassyJacket 8y agoThis conspiracy goes all the way to the kernel!
- __jal 8y agoI doubt it. I generally think of Google the same way I think of the NSA. If they stop doing something invasive, either it didn't work, they found a better way of doing it, or it was transferred to a legally distinct category, and we only hear about it because of PR considerations.
- ehsankia 8y agoThat's a pessimistic way of looking at it. Personally, from my experience, it's the exact opposite: If they're doing something invasive, it's because the data actually powers a feature so valuable that it's generally worth it.
- sgc 8y agoSince I use dictation so much, I hope others don't use it as much, and google uses/prioritizes more of my speech. But I don't use dictation with sensitive data so I don't worry about privacy in this particular instance.
- propogandist 8y agoGboard is governed by Google's catch all privacy policy, that allows them to gather all data and mine everything. If you have an android device with Google services and a firewall, you'll see that the device is constantly phoning home, which is also noted in the privacy policy. This does nothing for privacy, rather than provide the illusion of privacy.
- cromwellian 8y agoGboard uses differential privacy.
- arctux 8y agoI've only seen articles that say Google was going to "explore" adding differential privacy to Gboard analytics [0]. Do you know if the feature ever shipped, and is it the only way sends data to Google? I'm mistrustful of Google's privacy stance, since they have a history of changing their privacy policy, then misleading users about it. Remember when they implemented personally-identifiable web tracking and sold it to users as "new features for your Google account"? Merging Doubleclick's tracking data with my Google account doesn't seem like a feature to me. [0]: https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/06/following-apple-google-tests-differential-privacy-in-gboard-for-android/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/06/following-apple-google-te... [1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/google-has-quietly-dropped-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking https://www.propublica.org/article/google-has-quietly-droppe...