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I have always been dubious of this because: Someone would have noticed if all the phones on their network started streaming audio whenever a conversation happe
by ericmcer 8mo ago
I have always been dubious of this because:
Someone would have noticed if all the phones on their network started streaming audio whenever a conversation happened.
It would be really expensive to send, transcribe and then analyze every single human on earth. Even if you were able to do it for insanely cheap ($0.02/hr) every device is gonna be sending hours of talking per day. Then you have to somehow identify "who" is talking because TV and strangers and everything else is getting sent, so you would need specific transcribers trained for each human that can identify not just that the word "coca-cola" was said, but that it was said by a specific person.
So yeah if you managed to train specific transcribers that can identify their unique users output and then you were willing to spend the ~0.10 per person to transcribe all the audio they produce for the day you could potentially listen to and then run some kind of processing over what they say. I suppose it is possible but I don't think it would be worth it.
- amatecha 8mo agoGoogle literally just settled for $68m about this very issue https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/26/google-privacy-suit-settlement-voice-assistant https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/26/google-pr... > Google agreed to pay $68m to settle a lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant spied inappropriately on smartphone users, violating their privacy. Apple as well https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/03/apple-siri-privacy-lawsuit-settlement https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/03/apple-sir...
- romanows 8mo agoThe next sentence under the headline is "Tech company denied illegally recording and circulating private conversations to send phone users targeted ads".
- caminante 8mo agoThat's a worthless indicator of objective innocence. It's a private, civil case that settled. To not deny wrongdoing (even if guilty) would be insanely rare.
- romanows 8mo agoObviously. The point is that settling a lawsuit in this way is also a worthless indicator of wrongdoing.
- caminante 8mo ago> settling a lawsuit in this way is also a worthless indicator of wrongdoing Only if you use a very narrow criteria that a verdict was reached. However, that's impractical as 95% of civil cases resolve without a trial verdict. Compare this to someone who got the case dismissed 6 years ago and didn't pay out tens of millions of real dollars to settle. It's not a verdict, but it's dishonest to say the plaintiff's case had zero merit of wrongdoing based on the settlement and survival of the plaintiff's case.
- monocularvision 8mo ago“Google denied wrongdoing but settled to avoid the risk, cost and uncertainty of litigation, court papers show.” I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not.
- stackghost 8mo ago>I keep seeing folks float this as some admission of wrongdoing but it is not. It absolutely is. If they knew without a doubt their equipment (that they produce) doesn't eavesdrop, then why would they be concerned about "risk [...] and uncertainty of litigation"?
- gildenFish 8mo agoIt is not. The belief that it does is just a comforting delusion people believe to avoid reality. Large companies often forgo fighting cases that will result in a Pyrrhic victory. Also people already believe google (and every other company) eavesdrops on them, going to trail and winning the case people would not change that.
- stackghost 8mo agoThat doesn't answer my question. By their own statement they are concerned about the risks and uncertainty of litigation. Again: If their products did not eavesdrop, precisely what risks and uncertainty are they afraid of?
- caminante 8mo agoI'm giving parent benefit of the doubt, but I'm chuckling at the following scenarios: (1) Alphabet admits wrongdoing, but gets an innocent verdict (2) Alphabet receives a verdict of wrongdoing, but denies it and the parent using either to claim lack of > some admission of wrongdoing The court's designed to settle disputes more than render verdicts.
- caminante 8mo ago
- dieortin 8mo agoThat one is about incorrect activations, not about spying on anyone
- orbital-decay 8mo agoThose lawsuits are not about continuous background spying at all
- jmholla 8mo ago> Someone would have noticed if all the phones on their network started streaming audio whenever a conversation happened. You don't have to stream the audio. You can transcribe it locally. And it doesn't have to be 100% accurate. As for user identify, people have mentioned it on their phones which almost always have a one-to-one relationship between user and phone, and their smart devices, which are designed to do this sort of distinguishing.
- caminante 8mo agoEven the parent's envelope math is approachable. With their assumptions, you can log the entire globe for $1.6 billion/day (= $0.02/hr * 16 awake hours * 5 billion unique smartphone users). This is the upper end.
- htrp 8mo agoTerrifying cheap if you think about it
- Mogzol 8mo agoTranscribing locally isn't free though, it should result in a noticeable increase in battery usage. Inspecting the processes running on the phone would show something using considerable CPU. After transcribing the data would still need to be sent somewhere, which could be seen by inspecting network traffic. If this really is something that is happening, I am just very surprised that there is no hard evidence of it.
- idiotsecant 8mo agowho says you need to transcribe everything you hear? You just need to monitor for certain high-value keywords. 'OK, Google' isnt the only thing a phone is capable of listening for.
- intended 8mo agoI have a weird and unscientific test, and at the very least it is a great potential prank. At one point I had the misfortune to be the target audience for a particular stomach churning ear wax removal add. I felt that suffering shared is suffering halved, so decided to test this in a park with 2 friends. They pulled out their phones (an Android and a IPhone) and I proceeded to talk about ear wax removal loudly over them. Sure enough, a day later one of them calls me up, aghast, annoyed and repelled by the add which came up. This was years ago, and in the UK, so the add may no longer play. However, more recently I saw an ad for a reusable ear cleaner. (I have no idea why I am plagued by these ads. My ears are fortunately fine. That said, if life gives you lemons)
- bspammer 8mo ago> At one point I had the misfortune to be the target audience for a particular stomach churning ear wax removal add. So isn’t it possible that your friend had the same misfortune? I assume you were similar ages, same gender, same rough geolocation, likely similar interests. It wouldn’t be surprising that you’d both see the same targeted ad campaign.
- intended 8mo agoNope. Gender/age and interests were different. Also - who has an interest in ear wax removal? The only reason I was served the ad was because I had an ear infection months before. Plus this was during covid. So this was the smallest group size permissible and no one else around for miles.