The United States Legislative Committee on Energy and Commerce last month sent a letter to Apple y Google to consult them about the practices carried out in both companies in matters of data security and privacy. Those from Cupertino have already responded, and with their response they have made it quite clear that their devices do not listen to users' conversations, much less, that they share the words or phrases dictated by users with third parties.
A straight dart at Google
To be exact, the letter sent by Apple attorneys to the committee's offices it specifies that "users are not its product", and that its business model "does not depend on collecting large amounts of personally identifiable information to enrich the profiles that are exclusively aimed at advertisers." A description that, reading it carefully, could well point directly to Google. Is Apple compromising or accusing Google? Not directly, of course.
Our business does not depend on collecting large amounts of personally identifiable information to enrich profiles that are exclusively targeted at advertisers.
The magic words of the assistants
The main concern of the committee and of any home user is to what extent these smart speakers and those integrated assistants listen to us. You just have to recite the magic words "Hey, Siri, Ok Google" or "Hey, Alexa" for the virtual butler to attend us immediately. What happens when we have a conversation in front of the microphone? Are they collecting data?
Apple has flatly denied that it listens to users 24 hours a day, ensuring that the recognition system is only activated with the words "Hey, Siri" and clarifying that it does not allow any other application to listen to or collect data from the assistant.
This does not end here
The congress wants to go further, and although it guarantees that both Google and Apple are collaborating in the investigation, for now it needs to continue collecting more data, since, according to them, there are third-party applications that have had access to data and have used data without the consent of the users. Neither Apple nor Google have responded to this, and the only thing they have commented in Cupertino in their letter is that on more than one occasion they have removed applications from the App Store, although they do not specify which developers were involved.