Google Home Mini hardware bug, always listening, prior to release

[WMGroomAK]

An article published on Bleeping Computers outlines that some of the upcoming Google Home Mini (to be released on October 18th) had a hardware bug that caused them to be constantly recording and transmitting back to Google.  The bug is associated with the Long Press activation feature and would basically make the device think that that long presses were being conducted and trigger the recording of sound.  In order to mitigate this, Google has rolled out a firmware that basically disables Long Press activation.  

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-home-mini-caught-recording-audio-due-to-hardware-issue/

Quote

Ouch. With the Google Home Mini being released on October 18th, it was discovered that some of them were constantly recording audio and transmitting it back to Google without being intentionally activated.

...

Those who attended the recent Google launch event were given a free Google Home Mini to take home with them. According to Artem Russakovskii from AndroidPolice, who attended this event, it appears that his device had been silently sitting there and transmitting what it recorded back to Google for about a week before he noticed.

...

When he contacted Google about the issue, they immediately sent someone over to pick up the device in order to a detailed analysis. According to the emails received by Artem, Google stated that this appeared to be a hardware bug in some of the Google Home Minis.

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We have learned of an issue impacting a small number of Google Home Minis that could cause the touch mechanism to behave incorrectly. We are rolling out a software update today that should address the issue. If you're having any additional issues, please feel free to contact Google Support at 1-855-971-9121.

While the Home Mini is typically activated by a user saying "OK, Google" or "Hey, Google", you can also activate the Mini press performing a long press on the device's panel. It appears that there was a bug in some of the Minis that caused it to think that long presses were being conducted and thus triggering the recording of sound.

According to Google, a new firmware with version number 1.28.100122 has already been rolled out to all Google Minis that disables this long press feature in order to prevent it from triggering unwanted recordings.

My sarcastic side would think that the government intelligence community is probably having a sad day as another new listening device is pre-emptively disabled...  At the same time, this is yet another good reminder to anyone that has one of these home digital assistance that you may want to watch what you say in front of them.

[PlayStation 2]

How much money you wanna bet that this wasn't a bug and Google was just waiting for someone to catch 'em?

[mynameisjuan]

42 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

How much money you wanna bet that this wasn't a bug and Google was just waiting for someone to catch 'em?

Ummm....zero....Lights would come on and you could see the voice logs. Its not like this was trying to be hid. It was pretty obvious. 

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

Isn't it always listening?

Oh wait it is. So why are people freaking out? Oh because they said it wasn't listening. Why are people so stupid?

[RadiatingLight]

29 minutes ago, NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle said:

Isn't it always listening?

Oh wait it is. So why are people freaking out? Oh because they said it wasn't listening. Why are people so stupid?

it's not...

it does local processing listening for the "OK Google" wake word (and doesn't store anything), and it only sends sound to google's servers after it's woken up.

the malfunction was that it was randomly waking up due to a faulty touch sensor.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

1 hour ago, WMGroomAK said:

you may want to watch what you say in front of them

or you may want to throw them out so you don't have to worry anymore about what you can freely say in the comfort of your own home. 

 

It's funny really.  20 years ago people were worried about arguing in front of their kids, now they need to worry about the Alexa and the Google Home too.

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

Just now, RadiatingLight said:

it's not...

it does local processing listening for the "OK Google" wake word (and doesn't store anything), and it only sends sound to google's servers after it's woken up.

the malfunction was that it was randomly waking up due to a faulty touch sensor.

So it's not always listening, but it's always listening for "OK Google".

Do you see the problem?

[RadiatingLight]

 

3 minutes ago, NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle said:

So it's not always listening, but it's always listening for "OK Google".

Do you see the problem?

No. I don't.

who cares if it's listening if it's not storing any of that data?

the part people are worried about is ambient noise being stored on Google's servers, which doesn't happen.

 

 

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

22 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

 

No. I don't.

who cares if it's listening if it's not storing any of that data?

the part people are worried about is ambient noise being stored on Google's servers, which doesn't happen.

 

 

But it is. When a company says "We are definitely not storing any data" it means "We are storing your data period."

Especially if they emphasize on it.

[chilicheeseburger]

That has to be the most literal bug I ever heard of.

[RGProductions]

3 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

How much money you wanna bet that this wasn't a bug and Google was just waiting for someone to catch 'em?

Precisely $3

[Not_Jony_Ive]