Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users

money.cnn.com

18 points·_h_o_d_··5 comments

This article provides less information than a previously posted article [0] written by the individual who discovered the problem.

[0] Google is nerfing all Home Minis because mine spied on everything I said - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15446206

"A major flaw has been detected in the newly-unveiled Google Home Mini"

Do they (Google) really think everybody will believe this was "a flaw"?!

Obligatory dilbert strip:

http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-07-14

This will probably become a scandal. Without good privacy assurance, we won't progress properly and fast in the IoT world.

No need for the alarm.

This issue simply occurred because a small number of Mini's given out at a Google event had a defect where the "press to send voice command" registered phantom touches.

Not only was this clearly unintentional, but the issue was "resolved" (not really because they just disabled the would-be feature) and deleted the data they accidentally collected in a few days. Very few people were impacted.

It was an over sensitive capacitive touch sensor. I can understand the scepticism but if you've ever tried to make one you'd understand it's easy to screw up in subtle ways that only repro on a subset of devices.

As always, QA is an afterthought at Google.

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