Google collected children's voices, license plates: report
How did Google respond to the leaks of internal documents, according to the report by 404 Media?
According to the report by 404 Media, Google responded to the leaks of internal documents by acknowledging the incidents and claiming that all the privacy breaches were addressed after the issues were discovered. A Google representative stated that the reports obtained by 404 Media were from over six years ago and were examples of employee flags that were reviewed and resolved at that time. The company emphasized that it takes user privacy and data security seriously and has processes in place to address any potential issues.
What specific types of children's voice data did Google collect, and through which app were these data collected?
Google collected children's voice data through the YouTube Kids app. The specific types of voice data collected were speech command utterances made by children who used the speech command function to access the app.
What was the method used by Google Street View to inadvertently collect license plate numbers?
Google Street View inadvertently collected license plate numbers through an algorithm that was designed to pick up text. The system was intended to transcribe text from images captured by Street View cars, but it ended up transcribing license plate numbers as well, as they were also considered text. This led to the unintentional creation of a database containing geolocated license plate numbers and fragments. The issue was flagged by a Google employee and the data was eventually purged by the company.