Google to pay $68M over allegations its voice assistant eavesdropped on users | Hacker News Reader

Google to pay $68M over allegations its voice assistant eavesdropped on users

cbsnews.com

46 pointsiamnothere17 comments

So wait, the "phones are listening to us" urban myth turned out to be true? People getting ads about thing they recently talked about was a genuine concern?

I'm dreading the "I told ya so" from relatives.

Anecdotally, my personal incidence of this kind of thing has dropped off a cliff since I stopped using Google devices, Gmail, and Chrome, and I also stopped carrying any cell phone regularly. It still happens occasionally, but it’s within the threshold of random chance now. Before, not so much.

I also separated identity linked activities like banking from other activities via a separate device with VPN.

The few ads that make it through my setup are usually generic bottom of the barrel ads for people in my region. Feels nice.

I used to be skeptical about this and would try and find alternative explanations, for example, cognitive biases, coincidences, search requests from another device routed through a common wifi.

However, I have changed my mind through a lengthy process of attrition of possible explanations.

Recently my wife was around her friend who was having a vertigo spell. We talked about it when we met. None of us searched about it. Lo and behold my YouTube feed has videos on how to mitigate vertigo.

It's possible that they transferred information across two phone devices that came in close proximity, the owner of one who has a history of vertigo. But even that is a stretch, why transfer 'vertigo' specifically ?

>>Recently my wife was around her friend who was having a vertigo spell. We talked about it when we met. None of us searched about it. Lo and behold my YouTube feed has videos on how to mitigate vertigo.

Again, while the simplest explanation is the most tempting one, we just have to consider that Google has an absolutely stunning amount of information on any of us. Like, it definitely knows your friend is your friend. It knows what your friend searched for recently, and it knows you met and spent some time together. So of course it makes sense to show you videos about some stuff that it marked as "interesting" for them. They are probably getting videos for stuff that you have looked up recently, whether you talked about it or not.

Yes, as you would note, this was one of my hypotheses. However, it is on shaky ground.

This friend has suffered from vertigo chronically, it was not a new one off. My wife's and her friend's phones have been close proximity many many times before. It's certainly odd that Google would recommend vertigo only after a vertigo spell happened in the presence of my wife. None of the three searched for vertigo.

Phone motion sensors detecting a vertigo spell ? Well that's a possibility, but I doubt Google would be running such a detector 24x7, seems too expensive, unless the opportunity to show a timely ad is lucrative enough to cover the cost.

Although none of the three searched for vertigo, the friend may have searched for her pharmacy to refill her meds.

This is not the only incident. I have come to believe what I now believe about this eavesdropping, after a long period of whittling out competing hypotheses. I would usually file these incidents under confirmation bias. But these have happened just too many times.

A quantative Bayesian analysis would have been the right thing to do. On that count I am delinquent. I will, however, grant you this, human intuition is terrible at Bayesian analysis and tends to see significant patterns when there are none.

The reason occam's razor works is useful is it draws the one line connecting two points, rather than any squiggle that passes through them.

Nope, it did not turn out either way that I can see. Google just apparently paid pocket change to settle out of court and move on with their lives. (If you're asking yourself why settle if they're innocent: it's cheaper.)

> Google just apparently paid pocket change to settle out of court... If you're asking yourself why settle if they're innocent: it's cheaper.

It's much more likely that they aren't innocent because:

1. There's no evidence contradicting the eavesdropping charges

2. It's likely that Google paid to avoid court discovery of evidence for their wrongdoing, not because "it's cheaper"

3. While the settlement is cheap, the litigation costs for Google would hardly be higher if the won. Moreover, reputational gains from winning the lawsuit would justify paying a higher price for litigation even if it exceeded settlement costs (besides, almost any amount is "cheap" for Google).

I would think even before that, $68M to avoid discovery that could reveal to everyone what they actually do and how they do it was the no-brainer decision point.

i had to search to find this post again. I was on my android phone talking to someone on a similar android phone (both samsung galaxy notes, but his is 1 generation newer); i mentioned this article, and i was very vocal about how i used to mock people who said "think about the amount of data that would take! from every user!"

anyhow both our NAS died on the same weekend, across the country from eachother; his has bad drives, mine had a bad PSU; unrelated. However, we were discussing switching to dell servers and SAS drives, as they're basically "infinite lifespan" compared to our use cases. I asked, forgetting that DELL have BMC/built in boards for SAS, if he had a SAS card, as i had one, that uses the cables that have 1 plug on the card side, and 3-4 plugs for drives on the other, and that i had ordered it for my "make a PC a NAS" project, but wasn't using it anymore.

I was already on amazon on my computer looking for a kitchen cart. i was idly scrolling around while on the phone, after all the above was said. https://i.imgur.com/vBLntih.png

yeah. So i bought the card and cables on ebay five years ago, the card and cables do nothing for me, only for my friend (potentially, but Dell comes with SAS ready to go, no cables needed), and i last looked at this style of cables 5 or 6 years ago. I haven't searched amazon for "replacement" parts or NAS gear on my side, either.

This is such a hilarious coincidence!!!!

Was this built by the same developers who are paranoid federal agents are going to bust into the Google offices and haul them away into the night?

So that comes out to what 0.3 cents per user?

Serious question: what happened to Apple Siri voice leaks? The one where a contractor was in possession of people's private conversations?

If I recall that leak contained some serious stuff including a rape and some people planning some sort of heist.

Maybe this other settlement is related? Apple had one of these too: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lopez-voice-assistant-payout-se...

Just touching on the notion here, but oh how sad and funny it is. Yep, devices with microphones in them have been here forever and could have been used this way easily from the start, and now here we are!

Microphones sure but the near real time analysis is pretty new. The Stasi as you may know required people with headphones on sitting in a van outside your house...

The cost of doing business

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