Every time you use your Google Assistant to get answers to your questions or perform everyday tasks, you think you're the only one who has access to those conversations. However, what you don't know is that there are people at Google who can listen to your conversations with your Google Assistant. A report by British broadcaster VRT News revealed that recordings of Google Assistants on speakers and smartphones are being transferred to Google , where they can be listened to by company employees .
VRT News was able to listen to some of the recordings of people from the Netherlands and Belgium and was even able to hear the addresses of some people from the recordings. However, what is more worrying is that some of the recordings were made without them even having their Google Assistant activated.
Google employees working in this area use these voice recordings to improve their speech recognition technology. According to the report, the company's employees receive recordings from people all over the world, which means there are many who could be listening to your conversations.
According to the VRT report, this violates Google's Terms and Services, as it doesn't mention anywhere that there are people listening to your recordings.
Google tries to hide personal information by labeling recordings with numbers instead of the user's name. But the fact that whistleblowers were able to identify addresses and names of some people from the recordings negates all the company's efforts to anonymize the recordings.
When Google was asked about the incident, it stated that it only uses and transcribes 0.2% of the recordings and uses them to improve its voice recognition technology.
This report is indicative of the fact that despite Google's promises to maintain privacy , we can never be 100% sure that our personal data is safewhen received by companies.
