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MrTonyBoloney t1_j2718gg wrote

Reply to comment by beebog in Google Home speakers allowed hackers to snoop on conversations by chrisdh79

Everyone says this, but if you think about it for more than a minute you realize it’s impractical and unrealistic

How exactly would it listen to you? Obviously they don’t listen LIVE to millions of devices. Store your every word into a database? That’s illegal wiretapping in most states and Google Legal wouldn’t fuck with that. Even if they did: what keywords would they look for, and how is any of that data any more useful to them than the data you willfully hand over? (e.g. Search queries, cross-site cookie tracking)

You should be more skeptical about real, scary data harvesting, not theoretical nonsense like this

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_Rand_ t1_j27tyel wrote

Plus its not like they can do it secretly.

We can see what data is being sent/received per device if we want to or at least how much when its encrypted.

If google homes en-masse just opened up the floodgates and started sending data for no reason constantly someone would notice and we would know practically instantly. It would be a matter of days before security researchers were reporting the problem and virtually every major publication would be telling you to turn them off immediately.

If it were a thing that say the FBI was doing to individuals as they felt necessary for surveillance reasons well... they can do that already anyways via other devices. A google home isn't going to change things.

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Cmdr_K9 t1_j28aolz wrote

Let's put aside the legal ramifications and talk practicality. Think about the sheer volume of data produced. Hours of audio per day, per device. Add that to what they already collect and even a tech giant like Google would have a hard time handling it. There's an entire school of thought dedicated to producing and handing over garbage data just to screw with anyone who looks at it.

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friendofoldman t1_j28m1np wrote

You’re assuming all the Google employees and contractors are ethical and respect googles own rules and regulations.

People are definitely nosy and will snoop. Tons of stories of employees leaking info they shouldn’t have accessed.

Public figures are usually targets of this. So at least they should be informed of the risk.

Also, let’s say your post pisses off the wrong incel who happens to be a contractor? He’ll back door to record your unguarded conversation. All it takes is an improperly thought out comment or joke to ruin a career of posted without the proper context.

I’ve been in IT for 30 years. A lot of the controls we have now are in place because people will snoop no matter how illegal it is.

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