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Privacy Loopholes in Google Voice, and Why Users Won't Even Notice

-- By SethLindner - 06 Nov 2009

Recent Google Acquisitions

Two recent acquisitions indicate that Google may be getting serious about entering the VoIP telecommunications market. In 2007 Google bought a company called GrandCentral, which ran a web-based call forwarding system that provided users with a single "central" phone number from which calls could be routed to multiple other phone numbers based upon user-configurable preferences. In April of 2009 the service was launched as Google Voice. In addition to the call forwarding features of GrandCentral, Google Voice adds call screening, blocking of unwanted calls, and voice transcription to text of voicemail messages.

While Google Voice allowed users to consolidate all of their conventional phone numbers into one Google Voice number, it still required users to have a separate land line or cellular telephone to make or receive calls. It appears that this is about to change. Google recently announced that it had purchased a company called Gizmo5 for $30 million. Gizmo5 offers the missing piece to the VoIP puzzle for Google by providing an actual phone number and software to make and receive calls. Many people speculate that Google will integrate the Gizmo5 features into Google Voice, creating a no-cost centralized telephone system.

Currently Google claims to have more than 1.4 million users of Google Voice.

"A Higher Sense of Privacy" -- User Reactions to Google Voice

I was curious to see what the buzz on the internet was about privacy issues raised by Google Voice, so I did a search for "google voice privacy." One article discussed some of the advantages and disadvantages of Google Voice, noting that although the Google Voice site was currently ad-free, it could change this in the future. Then came a reader comment that really worried me:

This comment makes me nervous because I think this guy is almost completely correct. Most users probably don't want to see advertisements in Google Voice that appear to be targeted to the content of their phone calls. And most users believe that phone calls should be entitled to greater privacy protection than other forms of communication. But remember, Google already knows how to play this game. It knows that we do want to feel like someone is standing over our shoulder. It knows that if we pick up the phone and hear nothing but measured breathing on the other end of the line, we're going to hang up pretty quickly. Google's response, then, will be to give users exactly they are looking for -- a "higher sense of privacy."

The Loopholes in the Google/Google Voice Privacy Policies

A careful reading of Google's privacy policy reveals what privacy means to Google. I call this policy attractively deceptive, because once we look beyond the first line reminding us that Google believes that privacy is important, and the statement of compliance with the U.S. Department of Commerce's Safe Harbor Program (that sounds safe), we see some startling possibilities.

Let's first look at how Google handles "personal information," which Google defines as information that "personally identifies you." The first problem is that Google presumes to know what kind of information personally identifies its users. It identifies name, email address, and billing information as examples. Even if we leave sophisticated data mining techniques aside, doesn't it seem possible that something like a simple list of the ten people that you call most often might pretty easily identify you. Next, the Policy plainly allows Google to "process [personal information] on behalf of and according to the instructions of a third party." So, even if the information that Google didn't classify as "personal" wasn't enough for third parties to identify you, those same parties can get Google to process the personal information to fill in the missing gaps.

Google Voice has its own privacy policy and even more problems. Let's take a look at what happens when you delete a record from your Google Voice account. The first thing that happens is that the message immediately disappears from your view.

Then, "up to 90 days" later, Google removes the information from its "active servers." Unfortunately, Google also has backups of everything. And those don't ever get deleted. In other words, it is there forever, permanently, and you've given Google permission to keep it. In effect, the only thing Google does when you delete the information is to keep you from being able to access it. The danger, of course, is that most users will simply forget that Google still has it, once it is removed from their view. This shows again why Google Voice is uniquely dangerous. People will use it without even knowing how much information they are really sharing with Google. And even if they realize that they've shared something they wish they hadn't, there isn't any way to get it back.

It is safe to assume that Google intends to make money from its users conversations (the $30 million Google just spent in the Gizmo5 acquisition combined with the vast number of companies with whom Google has had to work to make Google Voice is evidence that Google's cost of providing the service is significant, even if it pays next to nothing for the bandwidth). Even if Google continues its current practice of not showing advertisements on the site, users need to think seriously about how their information is actually being used. It is a foolish (but I'm afraid all too common) mistake to believe that just because we can't tell exactly how our privacy is being violated and our autonomy curtailed, those things aren't indeed happening on a massive scale.

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