Google will modify the policies regarding the recordings of Google assistant, the audios will only be available for the company to listen them if the user authorizes it.
In past months thanks to cyber security experts, we know that companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook listened and spied on users speakers and voice assistant applications. These recordings were supposedly heard by third party companies, and these was a big privacy issue
The official statement of these companies such as Facebook and Amazon was that the analysis of the recordings was only for the improvement of voice recognition system and to improve the assistant, which could be activated any time by accident.
Thanks to statements from a Google spokesperson, it is known that the company wants to reaffirm its security practices as well as improve the activation protocols of the Google assistant. These changes will give users more control over their privacy and use of their recordings.
These practices refer to the permissions that users will have to accept in order for their recordings to be heard, thus being more aware of their decision in the process, since in the past users were totally unaware if Google was spying on them or analyzing their audios.
The Google spokesman also stated that the percentage of stored recordings will be drastically reduced, and that files that are older than a few months will be removed from their databases.
Cybersecurity experts mention that Google’s new security measures apparently will now include questions in order to have explicit authorization from users, along with a more detailed explanation of how the stored recordings will be used.
The only thing that wasn’t clear is if the people responsible for analyzing and listening to the recordings of the users will be exclusive of the Google’s staff or a third party, an aspect that is totally opposite to the new security measure of Apple, which ensures that only employees of the company will be allowed to listen to recordings of the Siri assistant.
Cyber security experts from iicybersecurity conclude that the best thing for users would be that companies make the use of information and details of their services more explicit, since the texts about usage policies, terms and conditions are very extensive and unfortunately most users never read all this information.
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
