Never Know Who’s Listening

We are like Hansel and Gretel, leaving bread crumbs of our personal information everywhere we travel through the digital woods – Gary Kovacs (a San Francisco Bay Area technologist. He was the Chief Executive Officer of AVG Technologies. Kovacs has worked for Mozilla Corporation, Adobe, SAP, and IBM, and led Zi Corporation, a mobile text messaging company)

Alyssa Greenway, Journalist

   Google is a search engine to find someone or something that benefits people in everyday life. It’s very accessible and easy to use along with its high speed of finding information.

    Even though everything on the Internet isn’t exactly reliable because people can create propaganda and put false information; however, they could go to  multiple different websites provided.

  Google has many different services such as, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google +, OK Google, Gmail, Google Classroom and many more that help us all; however, is Google actually listening to everything that we say around our phones, TVs, computers, etc…

  This company could improve an easier use of information, and keep recorded what we’ve  searched like restaurants, stores, home, and even work. This could help so it tell us if traffic is bad, or if there is a sale at stores and shops we enjoy.

  Many have claimed that Google is always listening and that they personally aren’t comfortable with it. An anonymous citizen on Google + posted on their account stating, “If me and my wife are talking about some random subject like how long turtles live, I’ll type ‘how’ and it will fill in ‘long do turtles live’ like it was listening. And I’m terrified and impressed.”

  Google stated that the tech giant collects tons of data about you, including your search history, location, and voice searches that help improve Google’s services and provide relevant ads that will benefit them. They usually take the data from phone calls rather then actually listening to you.

  How many have actually read the terms of agreement when getting a new phone, or creating a new account? Not much I suppose. In the term of agreements it states, “We collect information to provide better services to all of our users – from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the people who matter most to you online, or which YouTube videos you might like.” It clearly states that it takes information to help better your life, but what are they really doing with it?

  A new Deloitte survey found that over 90% of consumers accept legal terms and conditions without reading them. This proves that people don’t really realize what they are signing away.

  As much as Google may benefit everyone’s life, is it really safe, especially if they have all of our private information? The Fourth Amendment protects against illegal searches and seizures, which in turn protects the privacy of personal information. The Ninth Amendment says that the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people, meaning they shouldn’t have access to our information.

  No one really knows if they are abusing their company policies or even if they are selling the information to people who want it.

  It never hurts to read what you’re agreeing to, or even taking a look in your settings and see what Google has access to.

  All we can do is simply be careful what we say around technology and what we search because you never know when it’ll come back to haunt you. Or throw everything away and live in the forest off the grid so they don’t know your secrets.