Google Voice And World Domination > Game changer

said by openbox9:

I don't understand how a company that openly admits that they mine all of your data and exploit it for profit is so well liked by the masses when those same masses are eager to point fingers at other companies for doing the same or less. Just wait for the day when Google becomes the new public enemy number one after everyone realizes that Google knows every single thing about them and every communication that they've had.

Lost in all the hooplah about the release of Google Voice is this disturbing fact: The service will give Google enormous amounts of information about the intimate details of your everyday life, including recordings of your voice mail and possibly your phone calls. Combined with what Google already knows about you, it could mean your privacy is at an end.

Google will know everyone who called you and when they called. They'll have records of your voice mail, and because they offer free transcription, it means they'll have not just the voice, but text of your calls as well. They'll have recordings of your phone calls --- and I would expect them to offer transcriptions of them as well, which means they'll have the transcriptions as well as your calls.

It already does the equivalent of this in Gmail, looking for key words, and then displaying ads based on those words.

Privacy advocates are already worried. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, when interviewed by the New York Times, has this warning about the service: "In the privacy world, it is increased profiling and tracking of users without safeguards."