Ok Google, eavesdrop on me. Google employees listening to Google Home recordings

[Tristerin]

While I am not one to say "Nothing in my house can listen in on me" because that isn't the case if I was to be targeted - however I am one to say "Why would I put an Eavesdropping device in my house" and rebuttal myself with "Nope" every time.

 

Secondary reason - people who have them and use them, when I have been in their house...aren't saving any time or anything really from what I can tell, so it seems to me to just be technology people are led to believe they need for convenience.  But I just don't see the convenience being such to have one, at all.

[RejZoR]

55 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

While I am not one to say "Nothing in my house can listen in on me" because that isn't the case if I was to be targeted - however I am one to say "Why would I put an Eavesdropping device in my house" and rebuttal myself with "Nope" every time.

 

Secondary reason - people who have them and use them, when I have been in their house...aren't saving any time or anything really from what I can tell, so it seems to me to just be technology people are led to believe they need for convenience.  But I just don't see the convenience being such to have one, at all.

I do use Siri here and there and even that out of pure convenience, mostly things about device itself like if any alarms are set, what time it is, how much battery charge is there etc. And because I believe Apple isn't doing this shit (but may change if things come out they are).

[thorhammerz]

1 hour ago, Tristerin said:

so it seems to me to just be technology people are led to believe they need for convenience.

If you repeat a half-truth (or an outright lie) enough, it will become functionally (even if not technically) the truth in the eyes of those around it.

 

 

[Tristerin]

8 minutes ago, thorhammerz said:

If you repeat a half-truth (or an outright lie) enough, it will become functionally (even if not technically) the truth in the eyes of those around it.

 

 

Sheeple

[maartendc]

2 hours ago, comander said:

1. There are varying degrees. Some random Chinese company selling smart plugs for $3 each is likely a bad choice. 
2. I don't care about the average Joe so much as I do myself.

1. Sure, but a manufacturer that stops firmware updates after a 2 years is just as bad as one that doesn't do updates at all. Sooner or later these devices are out in the wild and vulnerable. This is a critical flaw in how the whole industry and these devices work, not a matter of "which one do I buy?"

2. Well you should care about the average joe's lightbulbs DDOS'ing everything. Which they do and will.

 

 

[Blademaster91]

2 minutes ago, comander said:

 

There's part of me that hopes home routers will idiot proof most of these largely theoretical reasons in the near to mid future. 

Only if home router manufacturers are forced to keep their firmware updated, so many are garbage because they only get a few updates if any at all.

[FezBoy]

On 7/10/2019 at 9:41 AM, DrMacintosh said:

I wonder if there is a smart speaker that does not listen to you, does not record your voice, and does not sell your data

Found it! https://mycroft.ai/

[justpoet]

When you combine stuff like this and similar with Alexa, add in interconnectivity of just about all kinds of IoT devices now, and that HUGE swaths of data from all of the IoT devices are being kept from everything that is connected…you get a gold mine to any gray/black hat/business.  Often, that mine ends up being not secured correctly at various points too, be it a brand, a roll out, etc…and then stuff like this happens.

https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/report-orvibo-leak/

 

For quite a while while that database was visible it was REALLY easy to use that to find a person with a smart lock by address, and then issue commands to unlock the door.

 

"Smart Home" and "Connected security" are all actually MUCH less secure and far more stupid.  That's assuming the devices themselves are actually kept up to date with security and don't just add their own security holes everywhere…like the fish tank temperature monitor that hackers took an entire high roller database from a casino through.

https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/iot-hacking-thermometer.html

 

So, yeah.  Just say no to cloud based items that need a connection to work.  If it is truly smart, it'll do it in your home without needing to communicate to the internet all the time, so your information isn't sent for all to eventually see.

[jagdtigger]

16 minutes ago, justpoet said:

Just say no to cloud based items that need a connection to work

Mostly agree with you, except on this. People should stay the hell away from any smart junk. All of them are a useless gimmick anyway....

[justpoet]

46 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Mostly agree with you, except on this. People should stay the hell away from any smart junk. All of them are a useless gimmick anyway....

There are some good uses.  Things like reading indoor/outdoor temperatures and sun exposure to automatically adjust blinds and air exchangers.  Automatically setting the temperature of the house and/or bothering to keep the hot water tank hot based on if people are present (commonly done now by detecting if your cell phone is present) or not are also great ways smart devices connected together inside a home can both save energy and make it more comfortable for people.  Of course, then there's accessibility for things like a doorbell or alarm also flashing lights and triggering a vibration notification for a deaf person.  I would say that MANY "smart" devices aren't really that useful, but to say that's true of all is a bit overstating it.

 

Note: Nothing I mentioned above requires cloud connectivity, though several of the options sold for the above require sending all the data to the cloud anyway, so it is important to pick and choose carefully after reading the fine details of implementation.

[jagdtigger]

17 hours ago, justpoet said:

Things like reading indoor/outdoor temperatures and sun exposure to automatically adjust blinds and air exchangers.

You can do it with dumb devices too... (and cheaper too)

 

17 hours ago, justpoet said:

 Automatically setting the temperature of the house and/or bothering to keep the hot water tank hot based on if people are present

Keeping a constant temperature requires way less energy than letting things cool down/heat up and then heating it up/cooling it down. (We have a dumb thermostat on the gas boiler. We haven't touched it since it was installed and configured.)

 

17 hours ago, justpoet said:

smart devices connected together inside a home can both save energy and make it more comfortable for people

Highly doubt the first point, especially with all these smart vampires running constantly(usually on a bottom grade Chinese crap psu). Top it off with the price premium and the negligible savings those could get you are gone.... The second one is more about laziness than comfort as far as i see it.

 

17 hours ago, justpoet said:

triggering a vibration notification for a deaf person

 

Same could be done via simple dumb electronics and a simple RF transimtter and recevier....

 

 

All these new-fangled internet connected junk are good for is to let companies to profile every aspect of your life and profit from it. Same with mesh stuff.

[maartendc]

12 hours ago, justpoet said:

There are some good uses.  Things like reading indoor/outdoor temperatures and sun exposure to automatically adjust blinds and air exchangers.  Automatically setting the temperature of the house and/or bothering to keep the hot water tank hot based on if people are present (commonly done now by detecting if your cell phone is present) or not are also great ways smart devices connected together inside a home can both save energy and make it more comfortable for people.  Of course, then there's accessibility for things like a doorbell or alarm also flashing lights and triggering a vibration notification for a deaf person.  I would say that MANY "smart" devices aren't really that useful, but to say that's true of all is a bit overstating it.

 

Note: Nothing I mentioned above requires cloud connectivity, though several of the options sold for the above require sending all the data to the cloud anyway, so it is important to pick and choose carefully after reading the fine details of implementation. 

All of the use cases above have been available in home automation systems since like the 1990's.

 

No reason you need an Amazon Echo or Google Home for any of this.

No reason to voice control any of this, it can work just as well with a remote, phone app, or even just fully automated without user input.

No reason to have breaches of privacy for any of this.

 

Google, Amazon and Apple would LOVE for you to have them be at the center of your entire home automation system. But it is simply not necessary. Companies like Honeywell have been offering home automation systems for literally decades.

[peanuts104]

23 hours ago, maartendc said:

Yeah, its called a Bluetooth speaker. I have one, it plays music, or anything I connect it with via bluetooth.

It doesnt listen to me, it doesnt record my voice, it doesnt sell my data.

 

FFS are people really surprised by this news?! Really, Google, the company that got rich by collecting user data? Is collecting my data???

Who would put these speakers in their house in the first place? Such limited usefulness, I really don't get it. Everything that "smart" speaker does I can look up on my phone faster and better.

 

Oh, and by the way, if you put your house full of Wifi lightbulbs to work with these crappy speakers, those are just more devices to get hacked and turned into a botnet eventually. Have fun while your lightbulbs are DDOS'ing your favorite website or service.

I found something interesting on a bluetooth sound bar I bought for my computer. When I went into the sound settings on Microsoft it showed up as a microphone under the recording section as well as the speaker section.  As far as I remember, it wasn't an advertised feature, but it was there picking up everything I was saying.  

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Looks like this is being picked up worldwide now, so much that Google US felt obliged to make a blogpost about it.

 

I really liked this part :

Quote

We just learned that one of these language reviewers has violated our data security policies by leaking confidential Dutch audio data. Our Security and Privacy Response teams have been activated on this issue, are investigating, and we will take action. We are conducting a full review of our safeguards in this space to prevent misconduct like this from happening again.

 

Basically instead of apologizing for misleading customers and mishandling data that they had no business collecting, they're going after the person who exposed this problem. 

 

Source : https://www.blog.google/products/assistant/more-information-about-our-processes-safeguard-speech-data/

[maartendc]

36 minutes ago, peanuts104 said:

I found something interesting on a bluetooth sound bar I bought for my computer. When I went into the sound settings on Microsoft it showed up as a microphone under the recording section as well as the speaker section.  As far as I remember, it wasn't an advertised feature, but it was there picking up everything I was saying.  

The bluetooth speaker I have (Logitech UE BOOM) also has a microphone. But this is just there for when you pair it with a phone via Bluetooth, you can use it as a speakerphone for conference calls or something like that.

 

I would imagine the one you have is similar. It does not record, it just sends microphone over bluetooth to the device it is paired with. Not dissimilar to a microphone built into a webcam or something like that.

[The King of the Undead]

1 hour ago, valdyrgramr said:

I had one in my home and the Google employee tried to sue me over his therapy bills.

I actually can't decide if this is satire. I am an idiot probably.

[TacoSenpai]

28 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Knowing me, it could be true.

Maybe we all need to do a reverse psy op and just go to wattpad and fanfiction and narrate Shrek x Cory in the House to our spy devices that'll get em.

[justpoet]

5 hours ago, maartendc said:

All of the use cases above have been available in home automation systems since like the 1990's.

 

No reason you need an Amazon Echo or Google Home for any of this.

No reason to voice control any of this, it can work just as well with a remote, phone app, or even just fully automated without user input.

No reason to have breaches of privacy for any of this.

 

Google, Amazon and Apple would LOVE for you to have them be at the center of your entire home automation system. But it is simply not necessary. Companies like Honeywell have been offering home automation systems for literally decades.

Yes, and those non-connected devices are also considered smart devices.  Most automation systems are.  What those aren't, are IoT devices, since they're not internet connected.  That was much my initial point.  There are great use cases for smart technologies…but not really any reason to require cloud connectedness to do what they're doing.

[justpoet]

8 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Keeping a constant temperature requires way less energy than letting things cool down/heat up and then heating it up/cooling it down. (We have a dumb thermostat on the gas boiler. We haven't touched it since it was installed and configured.)

Constant temperature is only more efficient if you're trying to swing the temperature back to the "comfort" temps really fast, have too small of a heating system, or are using a heat pump in a very well insulated and sealed home.  For the "average" person using a fossil fuel to heat an older home with only reasonable sealing and insulation, letting it get cooler during the day and night when they're not up and active is a significant energy fuel savings.  I'm personally moving towards heat pumps and a lot more insulation in my home, but unfortunately that's still a small minority of what's out there.

[jagdtigger]

2 hours ago, justpoet said:

Constant temperature is only more efficient if you're trying to swing the temperature back to the "comfort" temps really fast,

More like horribly inefficient, just think. Your chosen system would be running on full tilt because it would not only need to heat up the air, but all the furniture and anything inside the house plus the walls. As for old houses the owners would benefit more from upgrading the insulation than buying junk.

[justpoet]

47 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

More like horribly inefficient, just think. Your chosen system would be running on full tilt because it would not only need to heat up the air, but all the furniture and anything inside the house plus the walls. As for old houses the owners would benefit more from upgrading the insulation than buying junk.

The average house, even an average well sealed house, loses the air inside it twice every hour.  Even the most strictly sealed passive house regulations still go through .6 of the entire air in the house every hour.  As for heating, a typical fossil fuel furnace only has an off and an on state (and even older heat pumps are like this).  As a result, it is still more efficient for them to do things like temperature setbacks at night/day.  Newer heat pumps are variable, much like our PWM fans in computers, and only do the amount they need to at a given time, both in use of the compressor and in use of the fan to circulate the heating/cooling coming from the system.  Heat Pumps are so much more efficient, but also so much slower to move heat, that this is why they benefit from much more constant temperatures, because if you try to do a 5 degree setback with them, they wouldn't generally catch back up like a fossil fuel system would do with no real extra fuel use.  For a heat pump system to do that, they generally have to use their backup, which is just an electric resistive heating element, and that removes their energy and cost savings.

 

We're well beyond the scope of the original topic though, as well as my original point, that not all automation is useless gadget junk, and that most of it (including useless gadget junk) doesn't have a real need to be IoT to do the same things it is doing, other than somebody designed it that way.

[appleache]

On 7/10/2019 at 11:41 AM, DrMacintosh said:

I wonder if there is a smart speaker that does not listen to you, does not record your voice, and does not sell your data

cortana, because it is D E A D

[realpetertdm]

I will now proceed to turn Google Assistant on and yell ME ME BIG BOY 69 times

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, justpoet said:

As for heating, a typical fossil fuel furnace only has an off and an on state

gas boilers also fossil fuels but they have way more states than merely on/off. Thats why i wrote that a modernization is mutch more cost effective than any of the smart junk...

 

8 hours ago, justpoet said:

and that removes their energy and cost savings.

Depends on the efficiency of the heater, so this is pretty much false. (Same as any other heating solution be it fossil or heat pumps.)

 

8 hours ago, justpoet said:

not all automation is useless gadget junk

 I didnt said automation is bad. I just say that all of the smart stuff is just a gimmick and the good old "dumb" solutions will do just fine for way less money...

[79wjd]

 

On 7/11/2019 at 1:22 PM, maartendc said:

Everything that "smart" speaker does I can look up on my phone faster and better.

And when your hands are dirty or otherwise preoccupied -- for example, in the kitchen, then you're absolutely not going to be faster not to mention the potential impracticality of freeing your hands.

 

Or any number of lazy scenarios where you don't have your phone on you and don't want to get up, or you left the remote on the other side of the room and don't want to get up.

 

There are lots of use cases where a smart speaker is advantageous.