Is Google Eavesdropping? Is it True that Google Can Listen In to Your Room Through Your Computer’s Microphone?   - 5,463 Views, 4 Comments

In otherwords, Google eavesdropping.

So what’s the real story here?

Well, it is true that some members of Google’s research team have presented a paper on “Real-Time Ambient-Audio Identification”.

Said the authors on the official Google Research blog, “We showed how to sample the ambient sound emitted from a TV and automatically determine what is being watched from a small signature of the sound — all with complete privacy and minuscule effort. The system could keep up with users while they channel surf, presenting them with a real-time forum about a live political debate one minute and an ad-hoc chat room for a sporting event in the next. And, all of this would be done without users ever having to type or to even know the name of the program or channel being viewed.”

Now, how the heck they can listen in to your room and determine what you are watching “with complete privacy” is beyond me. In fact, I suggest that listening in to your room is antithetical to “complete privacy”. Perhaps they mean with ‘complete anonymity” although that too would be a completely bogus claim, as they would have, at minimum, the IP address of the computer through which they were listening. Do they mean they will not keep that data? Do you trust them not to?

As to how Google (or any one else) could accomplish this listening in, the general consensus seems to be that it would be via your Flash software, with Google taking advantage of your Flash install to access either your computer’s built-in microphone or the audio on your webcam (which of course begs the question about them watching remotely).

A friend of mine has a good friend whom is quite senior at Flash, and he approached his friend about this. And here, reprinted with permission, is what his friend said:

“Yes, under some circumstances, the Flash Player can access the user’s
web cam and mic. The primary use case is for online collaboration
applications, like Breeze. By default, this requires the end-user to
explicitly authorize such access through a dialog prompt. For example,
if you go to a web site that wants access to your web cam as part of an
online meeting, you first will be prompted with a dialog to explicitly
allow it before the action can take place. The same is true of the
microphone. If you deny access, the action fails and the Flash media
cannot use these local resources.

By default, the Flash Player will always prompt. So, if you never
changed this setting (which is rare), no one can access this hardware
without you being prompted to allow it each and every time.”

So, there you have it. If Google plans to bring this to market, and if they plan to use Flash to do it, it should be the case that you will be required to opt-in before they can listen in.

But, that said, it’s probably not a bad idea to get in the habit of turning off your microphone and webcam when you aren’t using them.