Do you worry about privacy risks by legitimate applications?

Before an Indian Parliamentary standing committee on information technology, India Today magazine reported that Google reps made a startling admission. They said in 2019 they listened to a few user audio recordings and only to users who opted into the voice and audio activity program.

To delete your data and voice recordings from Google log into your gmail account and visit http://myactivity.google.com.

Scroll down to and click on the ‘Delete’ dropdown button. Choose what data you want to delete and for how long.

To choose what data Google will store, open the My Activity page you’d like to adjust. The options are Web & App Activity, Location History, and YouTube History. In each section, uncheck boxes you do not want Google to store.

Turn on auto-delete to ensure collected data is deleted. Turn off microphone access. On your Google smart devices, it’s easy. Just slide the microphone switch ‘off’.

On your iPhone: Open Settings. Tap Privacy. Open Microphone Settings. Find any apps you’d like to disable microphone access for and toggle the switch to ‘off’.

On your Android phone: Open Settings. Open Account Services. Open Search Assistant and Voice.Tap Google Assistant

Scroll to Assistant Devices. Then turn off Google Assistant for any device you do not want to have access.