Google Apps: Listening to Your Conversations? Here's How to Stop Them

You may be astonished to discover that some apps, including Google apps, can listen to your real-world conversations. Google explicitly acknowledges this practice within its terms of service. Google apps like Search, Assistant, and Maps are known to save audio files when you interact with them. Google clarifies in their terms, "When you speak to Google services, Google uses its audio recognition technology to process your audio and respond to you."

Why Does Google Record Audio?

Google's rationale for recording audio lies in improving its voice recognition technology and services like Google Assistant. They emphasize that your private conversations are never recorded or spied on. However, audio snippets are collected and analyzed by a specially trained team. This team listens to audio snippets, transcribes them, and adds notes to help Google services better understand audio. In essence, this data is used to enhance user experience.

How to Prevent Google from Recording Your Conversations

If you feel uncomfortable with this practice, you can prevent Google from recording your conversations. The process is straightforward and involves adjusting your privacy settings. Here's how:

Through the Web:

1. Visit activity.google.com.
2. Navigate to the "Data and Privacy" menu.
3. Scroll down and locate the "Web & App Activity" menu.
4. Disable the setting "Include voice and audio activity."

Through the Google App:

1. Open the Google app.
2. Click on your account icon.
3. Navigate to the "Manage your Google Account" menu.
4. Tap on "Data and Privacy."
5. Scroll down and locate the "Web & App Activity" menu.
6. Disable the setting "Include voice and audio activity."

By following these steps, you can ensure that Google is no longer listening to your conversations. It's essential to regularly review the privacy settings of all the apps you use to protect your personal data.