08-23-2017, 08:21 AM
It is in the terms of service (that no one reads and almost everyone just clicks "agree"). Would be interesting to see this tested in court.
The one thing I'll say in Google's favour is they don't make this secret. If you want to know how your data are used, or have access to them they provide quite a lot of information. It is better than Apple or Amazon who I would accuse of being more secretive. Google's blog posts explain a lot of what they do (and don't do). Internally Google talks about something they call "the creepy line". If they cross the creepy line for their customer base then they are in trouble. They know that. I think for anyone posting in this thread the creepy line has not only been crossed, but trampled into dust, but we aren't typical of the wider population.
Perhaps surprisingly I have a Google Home, but she is unplugged when not doing party tricks. It is a toy to play with, but anything done while it is active is essentially public. e.g. I'm not going to ask it for medical advice! The more sinister things are the devices you do NOT expect to be reporting back on you... webcams, hacked routers, spyware, wifi doorbells, etc
The one thing I'll say in Google's favour is they don't make this secret. If you want to know how your data are used, or have access to them they provide quite a lot of information. It is better than Apple or Amazon who I would accuse of being more secretive. Google's blog posts explain a lot of what they do (and don't do). Internally Google talks about something they call "the creepy line". If they cross the creepy line for their customer base then they are in trouble. They know that. I think for anyone posting in this thread the creepy line has not only been crossed, but trampled into dust, but we aren't typical of the wider population.
Perhaps surprisingly I have a Google Home, but she is unplugged when not doing party tricks. It is a toy to play with, but anything done while it is active is essentially public. e.g. I'm not going to ask it for medical advice! The more sinister things are the devices you do NOT expect to be reporting back on you... webcams, hacked routers, spyware, wifi doorbells, etc