Google is recording whatever you say - here's how you can listen to it and stop it

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Google is recording whatever you say - here's how you can listen to it and stop it

The good news is that the records come with an easy way of deleting all of the information that it collects.

Google is recording everything you say in its voice search. As a user, you can browse through every single of these records and listen to it as well.

How often people use Google's voice search is a matter of choice but it is mostly used when people don't feel like picking up the phone and still be able to access its basic functions or perhaps sometimes just for the sake of showing off.

Why Google keeps these records

Google says that the purpose of storing these voice records is to improve its language and recognition tools and thus enhance the search results next time.

However, from an individual's point of view, it is indeed not appropriate to know that Google is recording everything you have ever said using that feature and that too for years.

Thankfully, the good news is that the records come with an easy way of deleting all of the information that it collects.

How to read, delete and stop Google from keeping voice records

Head to Google’s My Activity history page and look at the long list of recordings. From there on you can go to a specific audio page where one can browse through all the voice commands entered on Google till date.

The audio records accessing feature was introduced by Google in June 2015, so it will have by now a good two and a half years of voice commands records you have given to Google.

Google also has another similar page for web records that will show you everything, everywhere you've searched on Google.

The best thing to prevent Google from keeping a footprint of all the voice records you have searched for is by simply deleting the files.

This can be done by clicking on the three dots on any record entry and clicking delete.

To get rid of every record on the system, one can press the “Delete Activity By” button, after which a page titled “Delete by topic or product” will appear.

From the drop-down menu, one has to choose “All time” and then subsequently, the “Delete” button.

In the future, an easy way to prevent this kind of eerie record-keeping of every second a voice is muttered to your phone/desktop is to turn off the Virtual assistant and never use the Google Voice Search.

But then again, the debate is raised about utilizing the new-end features and useful capabilities that tech giants like Google have on offer, versus accepting the fact that large corporations operating in Silicon Valley are keeping a track record of every movement you’re doing on the Internet.