How revealing is Google Assistant? Millions settlement in the USA

Voice assistants are eroding our data protection. In 2019, it became known that operators such as Amazon.com, Apple, and Google were secretly passing on some audio recordings of the assistants Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant to external service providers. There, people listen in, often working from home, and transcribe what they hear. Because this was not disclosed, and assistants often eavesdrop unintentionally, a class-action lawsuit has been pending against Google in the USA since 2019. It is now likely to end in a court settlement.

An entry with the US District Court for the Northern District of California shows that the parties have reached an agreement. Google will pay 68 million US dollars, and in return, the proceedings will be discontinued. The court must determine whether the agreement is fair, reasonable, and adequate. This is scheduled to happen in March.

After deducting approximately 27 million dollars in costs, the remainder is to be distributed to two groups: Most of the money will go to Americans who purchased a device sold under Google's own brand with Google Assistant since May 18, 2016, and register in time for the distribution of funds. A significantly smaller portion will go to Americans and their household members whose utterances were captured by Google Assistant without their consent, or who, with their consent, had their utterances captured by Google Assistant. However, the recording was then passed on to external service providers. Google Assistant was also installed on devices from other manufacturers.

For a handful of dollars

To this end, the parties have devised a point system: Four points are awarded per Google device purchased, with a maximum of three devices, meaning a maximum of twelve points. This includes, in particular, Google's connected speakers, connected screens, Google Home (including Mini and Max), Google Nest Hub (Max), and of course the Pixel phones. For the other group, there is one point per person. In total, a person will be awarded a maximum of 13 points.

Opinions between Google and the class-action plaintiffs differ widely on the number of eligible Americans. The latter estimate 60 million buyers of Google devices and 266 million other affected individuals.

The company responsible for the distribution of funds states that only a fraction actually registers. The historical fluctuation range in similar settlements is between 0.41 and 13 percent; they actually expect one to two percent. Based on this, those who purchased a single Google device are expected to receive between 18 and 56 dollars, and those affected without purchasing a Google device between two and ten dollars.

Media reports revealed the practice

In 2019, there were several media reports about manual transcription and evaluation of voice recordings. Someone had provided the Belgian broadcaster VRT NWS with more than a thousand voice recordings from Google Assistant. Based on the spoken, sometimes very personal things, the journalists were able to assign isolated recordings to specific individuals.

Bloomberg spoke at the time with seven Amazon employees who listened to private Alexa voice recordings all day long. Regarding Apple, an employee of a subcontractor of the British newspaper The Guardian reported similar eavesdropping practices with Siri. Spiegel Online subsequently spoke with a German employee who evaluated recordings from Apple's voice assistant Siri for an Apple service provider: "I manage between 1,200 and 1,600 recordings in six to seven hours."

The lawsuit is called In Re Google Assistant Privacy Litigation and is pending before the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose under case number 5:19-cv-04286. The lawsuit was based on contract law and California's unfair competition law.

• The Settlement application to the US District Court

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