Is Google always listening on your phone? Here are the facts and how to stop Google from listening to you.
Is your phone always listening to you? Does Google keep a log of everything you say? And if so, what can you do about it?
In an age where every device has a microphone and they’re made by companies who love to track what you do, these are valid questions. Let’s take a look at the facts behind Google’s recordings and how to stop your phone from listening to you.
Is Google Always Listening on Android?
Before we continue, we should explain what exactly Google records from your Android device. While we’ll briefly cover how to prevent Google from listening on iPhone later, we focus on Android here since it’s more relevant.
If you have a certain setting enabled on your phone, saying “OK Google” or “Hey Google” will cause it to listen for a command. Before you say this wake phrase, your phone is listening for the keywords, but is not recording everything you say and uploading it to Google.
Just like with concerns over the Amazon Echo, constantly recording everything a device hears would result in enormous amounts of useless data. We’ve looked more into whether your phone listens to you for more relevant ads, if you’re interested.
Even if you don’t have the “OK Google” hotword enabled, you can still use voice commands (which Google records too). Tapping the microphone icon on the search bar, or otherwise launching Google Assistant, will both immediately prompt you for a voice command.
What Google does record are the voice commands you say to your phone. If you say “OK Google, how old is Jack Black?”, Google holds onto the question and a few seconds of prior audio.
Update July 27 9:05AM ET: This article was originally published on July 20, 2018 and has been updated to include video.
With an increasing number of households buying into virtual assistants like Google Home and Amazon Alexa, it’s important to keep in mind that these devices are designed to listen. This includes recording and learning the tone of your voice and improving voice recognition and features for the virtual assistant. It’s supposed to be a feature and not a bug, but it’s landed Amazon’s Echo speakers in hot water after they spontaneously erupted in laughter.
Amazon claimed the affected Echo speakers were triggered by false positive commands. If you’re an Alexa user, it’s possible to delete all of your recorded queries. On the flip side, Google Home hasn’t yet had a similar crisis — at least not to public knowledge — but before it does, it’s good to know how to play back, delete, and organize the queries you’ve made.
To get started, log in to your Google account via a web browser. Click your profile picture in the top right, click on “Google Account,” and afterward you’ll be taken to an overview page. Look for the “Personal info & privacy” column centered in the overview page, then click on “Manage your Google activity.” Once you’re there, scroll down until you reach the “Review activity” section — this is what you’re looking for — and click on the “Go to my activity” link.
If you’re using your phone, the process is similar, but the appearance of the options change a little. To get there, log in to your Google account in the browser and tap the following: your profile picture > Manage Accounts > Google Activity Controls > Manage Activity. You’ll be greeted by a full list of all queries that can be sorted and deleted.
The activity page that loads is a revealing and complete overview of all queries you’ve made to Google search, Assistant on your phone, and Home. You can filter your activity from each of Google’s products and apps, including filters by date that include yesterday’s queries, last week’s, the last 30 days, all time, or a selected period of time. This is particularly useful if you’re only looking for your recorded voice inquiries. In my case, I asked my Google Home about the weather a few times in the morning (queries also include a timestamp).
Clicking on “Details” on the left, under each query allows you to see which of your devices received the query (including multiple Google Homes), as well as the coordinate location. Hitting the “Play” button lets you hear the full voice command, including the Google Home activation trigger “Hey, Google” — ironically, while testing this, my Home heard this over my PC speakers and triggered the weather report again.
After you’ve listened to a few of your previous voice searches, if you feel slightly uncomfortable over your coordinate location also being recorded, you have the option to permanently delete the recordings. Click on the hamburger icon (the three vertical dots) and click “delete”.
If you want to delete all queries within a certain period of time (such as a day, a month, or a a full year), click the hamburger icon on the “Today” header, or the “Delete activity by” link on the left-hand side of the page on desktop. From there, you can delete by the day, set a data range, or select “all time” and delete all inquires you’ve made on your Google account since the beginning.
Before you confirm the deletion, Google will warn you that the deleted data can’t be recovered, including a link to Google’s policies regarding data collection and deletion. Once you click delete, the query is gone forever with no ability to undo. If you’re nervous about what Google Home has recorded, it’s worth noting that the data never leaves Google’s servers or reaches third parties.
Google Home Records What You Say
Your Google Home spends most of its time listening for its wake words, “Hey Google” or “OK Google.” The device then records everything you say after the wake word and sends it to Google’s servers for parsing. Google needs to store these recordings temporarily. But Google may be storing what you say forever.
As the Washington Post points out, keeping the recordings forever used to be the default behavior, but it isn’t anymore. Google now makes you opt-in to sending the company your voice recordings. However, Google only made the change for new users and not existing users. If your account previously sent voice recordings to Google, it will keep doing so until you turn it off.
We’ve covered before why companies keep your data like this, but it’s pretty straight forward. Artificial Intelligence isn’t very intelligent, and as far as voice assistants have come, they still miss the mark frequently. As Amazon does for Alexa, Google employs humans to listen to your commands, compare them to what the Assistant thought it heard, and how it responded. Google uses this process to improve its results or learn what features users want implemented that don’t exist yet.
Trying to improve Google assistant is a good thing, but changing the default behavior from opt-out to opt-in is even better. Google is way ahead of Amazon on this front—with Alexa the default is still to record and worse yet, you can’t opt out at all.
How to Stop Google From Collecting Voice Recordings
If you’re an existing user working under the old defaults, the good news is you can tell Google to stop collecting your voice recordings. The even better news is it’s incredibly easy to do.
To stop this, go to Google’s Activity Controls website. Scroll to “Voice & Audio Activity” and toggle it off. You will see a warning that states Google devices may not understand you when you say “Hey Google,” but we think it’s old warning text. In our testing, commands still work.
Click the “Pause” option at the bottom of the warning.
You’ll need to repeat this process with every Google account you’ve connected to your Google Home. This setting applies to every device you can say “Hey Google” to, from your phone to a Nest Home Hub (formerly known as a Google Home Hub) to a Lenovo smart display.
How to Delete All Your Voice Recordings
Now that you’ve turned voice collection off, you can delete what Google already has. Just click on “Manage Activity” beneath the toggle on the Activity Controls website.
Click “Delete activity by” in the upper left corner of the page.
Choose which recordings you want to delete. To delete everything, click the box under “Delete by Date” and select “All Time.”
Finally, click “Delete” to delete the selected recordings.
It’s great that Google enabled a more privacy-sensitive option for new users. We wish Google had made the change retroactive, however. Hopefully, Amazon follows in stride and gives everyone similar controls in the future.
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Thanks to a function of their search software, Google could have years worth of your conversations recorded, and you can hear it for yourself. Your cringe-worthy history can be heard and viewed along with a list of all your searches, at your personal Google history page.
The feature was built into Google’s search function as a means of delivering accurate search results. However, the sheer accuracy and amount of data Google stores is chilling.
The good news is that you can turn it off and delete it, and at the end of this article, we will show you how.
The recordings can function as a kind of diary, reminding you of the various places and situations that you and your phone have been in. But it’s also a reminder of just how much information is collected about you, and how intimate that information can be.
You’ll see more if you’ve an Android phone, which can be activated at any time just by saying “OK, Google”. But you may well also have recordings on there whatever devices you’ve interacted with Google using.
However, even if you don’t have an Android phone and conduct Google searches on iDevices, Google is still listening.
When visiting your personal history page that the web giant keeps on you, it will show you everywhere Google has a record of you being on the internet.
Of course, Google claims that this information is never personally used against you and is done solely for the purpose of enlightening your experience on the web. However, imagine the ominous implications if this information was being used against you.
Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.
The data from these searches is then stored on each individual who conducts them. Using this data or steering results in a particular direction, the internet behemoth could effectively influence the entire world. Aside from influence, Google could predict the future based on trends.
Much of this search history is tied location data retrieved from the device being used to conduct the query. So, not only does the search engine have information on what your interests are, it has you specific interests based on where you are at any given moment.
Google’s motto of Don’t Be Evil now seems like less like a request for its users and more like a way of keeping themselves in check.
Now for the good news — you can turn all of this off.
If you’ve never disabled the feature, you will see a list of audio recordings, even some done outside of the Google app, as well as a transcript of the audio Google has converted to text.
What we recommend, after you further panic by listening to or scrolling through Google’s creepy recordings of your search history, is to delete them all and disable the functions.
The Independent explains just how to do this:
To delete particular files, you can click the check box on the left and then move back to the top of the page and select “delete”. To get rid of everything, you can press the “More” button, select “Delete options” and then “Advanced” and click through.
The easiest way to stop Google recording everything is to turn off the virtual assistant and never to use voice search. But that solution also gets at the central problem of much privacy and data use today – doing so cuts off one of the most useful things about having an Android phone or using Google search.
Now that you know this exists quit voluntarily handing over your data to unknown parties and share this article with your friends and family to show them how to stop it as well.
It should come as no surprise to you that your Google Home smart speaker is listening to you. That’s inherent in how it works; the speaker is listening to everything you say, waiting for the wake words, “Hey Google” or “Ok Google.” It then takes action on your command or question, and resumes listening for the next wake word.
What may bother some people, though, is that your audio is uploaded and, at least temporarily, stored on Google servers — which is usually used for analysis to improve voice recognition technology.
The good news is that there are two ways to stop your Google Home from listening to you. You can disable the microphone entirely — this is probably best used temporarily, since the speaker can’t hear or respond to you — or you can change your settings so that Google is not allowed to upload and store your audio on its servers.
Check out the products mentioned in this article:
Google Home Mini (From $49 at Best Buy)
Google Home (From $99.99 at Best Buy)
Google Home Max (From $299.99 at Best Buy)
iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)
Samsung Galaxy S10 (From $899.99 at Best Buy)
How to stop your Google Home from listening to you by muting the microphone
To temporarily stop your Google Home from listening to you at all, you can mute the speaker’s microphone. The location of the microphone switch varies depending on which model of speaker you own.
Here are the most common places to look:
- : The microphone mute button is located at the back of the speaker. Press it to mute or unmute. : The microphone mute button is a switch found near the power cord. Slide it to mute or unmute the microphone. : The microphone mute button is a switch on the back of the device. Slide it to mute or unmute the microphone.
How to stop your Google Home from listening to you by changing its settings
You can configure your Google Home not to store your audio on Google servers, so that Google cannot listen to anything you’ve said at home around the speaker. Even though Google won’t be able to listen, despite the warning message you see when you disable the feature, your Google Home should continue to work just fine.
1. Start the Google Home app on your iPhone or Android.
2. Tap your account avatar at the top-right of the screen.
3. In the pop-up window, tap “Assistant settings.”
4. Tap “Your data in the Assistant.”
5. In the “Voice and audio recordings” section, tap “On.”
6. Click the checkbox next to “Include voice and audio recordings” to uncheck it.
Google’s voice and audio activity page isn’t promoted heavily by the company, and visiting it gives a hint as to why. If you have (or have ever had) an Android phone with Google’s “OK Google” voice-control system, the page should show a list of every command you have ever given it – replete with a little play button next to it.
The feature is one of a number of attempts by the company to demystify its data-collection service. Similarly, Google offers a location history, showing users any location the company has tracked them to, through apps such as Google Maps as well as simply using an Android phone.
But in both cases, the features create a sense of unease just as strongly as they do reassurance. Yes, it’s good to be able to see what the company keeps. But it’s also a stark reminder of just how much it has in the first place.
That’s not to say the company doesn’t have good reasons. If you use voice control on a Google product, you’ve benefited from the fact that it stores your voice, both in aggregate (the large amount of data it harvests from users allows it to improve recognition) and in particular (by learning your specific voice, it can get better at recognising it). And if you use the services, you have already opted in to storing your data once (though you may not remember doing so). But if you’re still left unsettled by the feature, you can switch it off – sort of.
Turning voice Activity off doesn’t stop Google storing your recordings, but it means they get kept with an anonymous identifier, and can’t be easily linked back to your account. If you want to stop Google recording your voice at all, well, there’s only one solution: stop talking to it.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
This article was written by Alex Hern from The Guardian and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
A news story in the Guardian last week confirmed what many Apple users likely already suspected: Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, has the power to record private conversations, and these audio clips aren’t always just stored on a server – a number of samples are passed along to third-party, human contractors who are paid to listen to them.
This isn’t as simple as a voice assistant “spying” on its users: the report revealed that Apple’s contractors listen to the clips as part of the company’s quality control measures, working out whether Siri was triggered accidentally or on purpose, and whether its response was entirely correct. This practice is not explicit in Apple’s customer-facing privacy documentation, and due to errors in triggering Siri – “the sound of a zip”, the whistleblower said, can often set Siri off – contractors end up overhearing private conversations including drug deals, business meetings, sex and private medical appointments.
In one way this news is far from shocking – while Apple trades on the assertion that high-level security comes included with its products’ high prices, it has always been clear that by using Siri, or any voice assistant, the user must allow their phone to record and analyse their voice. It’s also worth comparing Apple’s approach with that of similar products. With Google Assistant, the software powering Google Home, audio is recorded and stored, but you can access your history and delete past recordings, and there’s an option to automatically delete your data every couple of months. Amazon’s Alexa stores queries until the user manually deletes them, and both Amazon and Google employ contractors to review a small number of their recordings (Google has stated in interviews that it “generally” provides a text transcript rather than the original voice recording, to third-party contractors). Microsoft’s Cortana collects voice data in order to improve its service, while Samsung’s Bixby does the same, involving a third-party service for speech-to-text conversion.
What is AI?
Artificial Intelligence has various definitions, but in general it means a program that uses data to build a model of some aspect of the world. This model is then used to make informed decisions and predictions about future events. The technology is used widely, to provide speech and face recognition, language translation, and personal recommendations on music, film and shopping sites. In the future, it could deliver driverless cars, smart personal assistants, and intelligent energy grids. AI has the potential to make organisations more effective and efficient, but the technology raises serious issues of ethics, governance, privacy and law.
Voice assistants are recording and listening to their users – what’s new? But there’s a subtler truth here worth considering: AI-powered “intelligent assistants”, lauded as efficient and effortless to use, are failing at answering even basic questions, and often activate accidentally at inappropriate times (well-known incidents include Siri interrupting the secretary of defence during a speech on Syria in the House of Commons, gatecrashing a White House press briefing and contributing to a TV news broadcast). These products aren’t even 100% automated – behind the gleaming, smooth-voiced interfaces are underpaid, overworked and resolutely human contractors. These are people who are precariously employed, often denied full employment rights and with little allegiance to the companies they work for, but hired to fill in the gaps in artificial intelligence. This is by far the most dystopian element to the story: in exchange for giving away our privacy to tech multinationals the services of stressed-out humans are behind the machines. Technology is no different to how fast fashion or fast food is produced – much of the heavy lifting is done in “sweatshops” out of sight, staffed by people.
Voice is hailed as the future of computing, including voice assistants, voice-recognition technology, ambient computing and the widespread use of smart speakers in the home. But voice is also the future of surveillance: earlier this year the Intercept revealed a nationwide database of voice samples collected in US prisons, while another story detailed the National Security Agency’s voice-recognition systems, including a project called Voice RT (“Voice in Real Time”) that aimed to identify the “voiceprint” of any living person. Human rights activists have criticised the establishment of a voice biometric database in China, while the invention of “deep voice” software, a deepfake for voices, augurs ill for the future of voice-based privacy services.
We live in a time of constant technological change and it’s likely that soon these services really will improve, and be fully automated. We can also take some solace in the fact that the Siri voice clips are at least anonymised, and generally last no more than several seconds. But this leak reveals that the qualities Apple uses to differentiate itself from its competitors are little more than hollow marketing, and that as Apple’s software is proprietary we have no choice but to either engage with it on its own terms, or avoid using its platform entirely.
We’re told that with AI, the more we allow it to watch us, the more sophisticated the service will become, but it’s worth remembering that the first duty of the companies developing it is to their shareholders. At the moment, we tolerate limitless surveillance in exchange for an extremely limited service. While there’s still time – if there’s still time – we need to consider what we gain and what we lose when we live with machines that mine us for information.
Roisin Kiberd writes about technology, culture and the intersection between the two
Michael Timmermann
You probably already figured that Google keeps track of your web searches, but did you know that the Internet giant may be storing recordings of your voice?
We recently discovered these audio files on the My Activity page, which is available at myactivity.google.com.
Google may be recording your voice
When you get to the My Activity page, you’ll see a timeline of activity across Google products, including websites you’ve searched and visited, as well as images and videos you’ve viewed.
Your current privacy settings will determine what exactly is displayed on your timeline.
Listen to the recordings
If you’ve used the “Ok Google” command to conduct voice searches, you’ll want to click on the Voice & Audio Activity tab (direct link) to listen to the recordings that are stored.
For example, I used the voice-control feature to set a timer on my Android smartphone. Google saved the recording. So when I clicked play, I heard exactly what I said using “Ok Google.”
Here’s how Google explains the audio that it stores:
When you use audio activation commands, such as ‘Ok Google’ or touching the microphone icon, your private Voice & Audio Activity stores some voice and other audio to your account. A recording of the following speech/audio, plus a few seconds before, will be stored.
Delete the files
Google says it stores the recordings to improve your experience with the voice search feature.
If you want to delete the audio files permanently, Google makes it easy for you to do that by navigating to “Delete activity by” on the top left of the My Activity page.
Using the drop-down, select “All time” as the date, choose “Voice & Audio” under the product menu and click delete.
Change your settings
Finally, you may want to change your settings to prevent future recordings of your voice and other audio from being saved to your Google account.
From the navigation bar on the left, click “Activity controls” and then pause “Voice & Audio Activity.”
Here’s what Google says about making this change:
When Voice & Audio Activity is off, voice inputs won’t be saved to your Google Account, even if you’re signed in. Instead, they may only be saved using anonymous identifiers.
Review your privacy settings
Google wants you to know that the information listed on the My Activity page is private.
In addition to the audio files, Google may be keeping records of your past web searches, location history, YouTube views and more. Here’s a step-by-step guide to delete that data as well.
And take this time to run Google’s Privacy Checkup tool to review and adjust your privacy settings.
GOOGLE confirmed employees listen to snippets of conversations recorded by Google Assistant earlier this month, according to reports.
The tech giant made the admission during a closed-door meeting with Indian government officials although it has clarified that it only uses snippets of recordings to improve the device.
Sources also told IndiaToday the company admitted that its AI assistant will at times record audio on a smartphone or smart speaker.
Google clarified how the assistant system works in a statement to Android Authority.
"In standby mode, the device processes short snippets of audio (a few seconds) to detect an activation — like when you say, 'Hey Google.'
"If no activation is detected, then those audio snippets won't be sent or saved to Google."
The statement also noted that when the Assistant detects its wake word, "the recording can include a few seconds before you activate your Assistant to catch your request at the right time."
In a further statement to The Sun, Google clarified that “Google Assistant is built to keep your information safe, private, and secure.
"By default, we don't retain your audio recordings and make it easy to manage your privacy preferences, with things like simple answers to your privacy questions or enabling Guest Mode," it added.
Google has previously admitted that employees listen to short recordings to improve language comprehension in its products.
"As part of our work to develop speech technology for more languages, we partner with language experts around the world who understand the nuances and accents of a specific language," David Monsees, product manager for Google Search, explained in 2019.
"These language experts review and transcribe a small set of queries to help us better understand those languages. This is a critical part of the process of building speech technology, and is necessary to create products like the Google Assistant."
Google has since changed its policies, requiring Home or Nest users to opt into having voice searches recorded in the first place, in response to the backlash.
If you're unsure whether you opted in or out, or if you're just curious to know what Google's recorded about you, there are ways to check.
CHECKING GOOGLE RECORDINGS
All of your Google activity can be found in the "My Activity" section of your Google account.
In there you'll find everything from your Google Maps entries to your search engine queries.
You can read a list in the Google Home app or actually listen back to your own voice search history if it has been recorded.
Thankfully, you can also easily erase your history by deleting recordings on your PC and deleting recordings on your phone.
HOW TO TURN OFF VOICE AND AUDIO
If you have previously opted-in to Google saving your audio or voice commands you can easily stop the devices from doing so.
However, it will cause voice searching with Google Assistant to stop working until it's re-enabled.
On a PC, you can access the feature by clicking on the settings bar in the top left corner of myactivity.google.com.
From there, hit "Activity Controls" on the menu and toggle "Audio Recordings" on or off.
Google will ask if you're sure and tell you a bit more about what pausing voice and audio means.
