Has Google breached privacy, collected children’s voices, license plate details and more?

A series of internal documents of Google reveals that the major IT organization collected children’s voice data without proper authorization, license plate numbers, carpool routes and private home addresses, according to a ‘New York Post‘ report. The privacy breach leak also mentioned that there were thousands of similar cases flagged by Google employees across five years, between 2013-2018. The search engine’s mysterious algorithm was responsible for collecting such private data, according to the latest reports.

Voice data of minors using YouTube Kids stored by Google

Incidents similar to these involve roughly 1,000 children who used the speech command function to access the YouTube app and get access to the YouTube Kids section.

However, Google has claimed that it was ‘a bug’ that was responsible for these alarming incidents and it was fixed soon after being flagged by experts. According to reports, Google’s team then deleted all logged data derived from the YouTube Kids databank during this period.

If this wasn’t a privacy scare enough, another Google employee reported that Google’s Streetview application was recording license plate numbers of vehicles on the road in a database by using an image-to-text algorithm. However, it was also noted that the issue around the number plates was ‘an accident’ and it should not have been recorded in the first place.

Email IDs, and IP addresses of a million users exposed?

Google has also been accused of exposing sensitive and private email addresses and IP addresses of a million users, including minors, according to reports. The company has been in the midst of privacy and data security issues for a significant amount of time which have time and again resulted in complaints being raised to federal authorities like the Federal Trade Commission in the US, which have resulted in subsequent settlements, according to reports.

FAQs:

1. Is there a separate YouTube app for minors?
There are various kinds of content on YouTube that may not be suitable for minors and therefore, there is a separate application known as YouTube Kids that can be used by them.

2. Is Google leaking private data?
According to recent privacy breach leaks and reports, Google has previously recorded the voice data of minors and recorded license plate numbers in their database without authorization, according to reports.