- So by now I'm sure most of you
have some sort of smart device in your home.
An Amazon Echo, or a Google Home.
They're great, they work really well.
But the other day, I was poking around
my Google account, and I came across this weird clip.
- [Recording] Okay Google,
how tall is Sleeping Giant Mountain?
- Turns out Google assistant has been recording
all of the conversations I've ever had with it.
That's weird.
I don't remember most of these conversations,
yet here they are, and Google hasn't forgotten.
Google says it's storing this data
to improve the assistant's voice model,
but what else are they using it for?
And can we delete this data?
Actually, yes, and it's pretty simple.
We already know that Google uses
a lot of your data for convenience features.
Like the types of YouTube videos you like to watch,
your location history in Maps, or auto-fill in Chrome.
So if you open the My Activity page
inside of your Google account,
you'll come across a buffet of personal data,
including everything we mentioned before,
your Google Assistant searches,
and the exact location and time of all of your queries.
This might scare you at first,
but keep in mind that asking for location-centric data,
like what's the weather, inherently involves
having to know where you are.
This is a lot of sensitive data, and even though
Google Home hasn't had any voice breaches like Amazon Alexa,
it is worth noting that you can still delete everything.
So let's delete my voice recordings from my activity.
First, go to myactivity.google.com.
Also, just so you know,
most of these steps are similar on mobile.
And from there, you're gonna find all of
your previous search history
from the beginning of time to present day.
And from here, I can filter by voice products.
So I wanna delete just voice recordings
from my Google account.
Here's the filter, and here's everything from yesterday.
Earlier, I asked "what's my name?",
and from here, I can click on the hamburger icon,
select delete, and the query
is permanently deleted from my account, purportedly.
From there, I can also go to another query
from 11:09 a.m. the same day,
click on the hamburger icon, click details,
and I can get some more specific details as to
what device I used, what app it was used with,
and even location, if it's pinged.
I can still go on the hamburger icon over here
and select delete, and that's that.
It should come as no surprise that Google
has this sort of data on you.
After all, it's how its ads and services work.
Right now, there's no telling if deleting this data,
however, affects the way that these services work for you.
The only thing we have to go on is
the popup that says deleted data can't be recovered,
which leaves me under the impression that deleted data
from my Google account is permanent.
But without official confirmation
from Google, I'm skeptical.
While having access to your recordings is great
if you want stricter control on your Google data,
you also have to be able to face the truth,
that if your going to use a machine
that relies on voice commands to carry out functions,
you need to be able to give it those voice recordings
in order for it to improve and to function.
Otherwise, turn off the lights yourself.
Thanks for watching.
Let me know what your favorite
smart assistant is in the comments.
And be sure to stay tuned
to youtube.com/TheVerge for more videos.
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