Is there ANY privacy with a Google device present?
9 minutes ago, Jet_ski said:Has anyone with a Google Home, Pixel phone, or Chromecast noticed they are receiving targeted marketing mail based on conversations they have had near their devices?
This is happened to us for the third time in the last 12 months. And our Google privacy setting is on “max privacy” if that actually means anything. But I suspect Google to be the culprit, my partner like their devices and all of the marketing mails arrive with her name on them. I checked and every app on her phone seems to have ok privacy policy, and most of them don’t have permission to access the microphone or cameras.
This is just too creepy, it’s one thing to see relevant ads online, it’s an entirely different story to have random companies get your name, address, and whatever else Google sold them.
Some people will swear that their smart devices are targeting ads based on conversations, but there's no real evidence to indicate they're doing this.
Chromecasts don't have always-ready microphones, for starters. And the mics aren't actively recording on your Home or Pixel -- they're just waiting for a wake word before they do anything. Besides, the computational demands on Google's part for always-on ad targeting would be ridiculous. It'd need enough computational power to actively monitor hundreds of millions of Assistant devices around the clock.
More often than not, it's most likely that you've done something else that sparked the targeted advertising, or even that circumstances happened to align. That it only happened three times in a year sounds like evidence Google isn't listening in — you'd think Google would want do to that a lot more often if it had the power to eavesdrop.
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