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Google Voice Mails Found In Public Search Engine

Posted by timothy on from the wouldn't-mind-being-able-to-put-some-there dept.

bonch writes "Google Voice Mails have been discovered in Google's search engine, providing audio files, names, and phone number as if you were logged in and checking your own voice mail. Some appear to be test messages, while others are clearly not. Google has since disabled indexing of voice mails outside your own website."

5 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Article is already updated by vxvxvxvx · · Score: 5, Informative

    UPDATE: It seems as if these voicemails have been publicly posted/shared online and Google indexes them. Here’s official word:

    “Since the initial idea behind posting a voicemail, was precisely to share it with others, we did not restrict crawling of those messages that users post on the web, but we can certainly understand that users would want to make them public on their sites but not necessarily searchable directly outside of their own website. We made a change to prevent those to be crawled so only the site owner can decide to index them.”

    1. Re:Article is already updated by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 3, Informative

      They added Disallow: /voice/fm/ to robots.txt for google.com, that's all.

  2. Google voice to speech is (relatively) crap by Fencepost · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been experimenting with the voicemail-to-text transcription services out there, and compared to both GotVoice and PhoneTag the quality of transcription from Google Voice is something of a bad joke.

    I understand that currently it's free (as opposed to $10+/month from the commercial services), and I have hopes that it will improve, but "quite nice" seems like a heck of a stretch at this point.

    Anecdotally, here's an edited for privacy transcription from PhoneTag: "Hi, Alan. It's Nancy at Village Surgeons. My number is 123-456-7890. I'm following up on my e-mail that I sent you last week with regard to backup of our (quicken?) system here. (Paul Oddlastname?) was, had a concern that it wasn't backing up. So, I just kinda wants to touch base with you about that. When you have a chance. Give me a call. Thank you. Bye."

    And here's an edited for privacy transcription from Google Voice today: "Hi Alan, it's gia Craig over at Northeastern collagen help topped and my computer is dead. It's definitely not working or managers on my phone's working. I checked the lines it doesn't look like. Anything's Unplugged, but I've pushed in any way you push the button to turn it on. There's no white that goes on movie then Maher of a machine starting. It's just absolutely dead and so could you do call me back and and come today. I do have to run over to delivery of the office for a few minutes this morning and then but I did not half hour. I might be at Colin's desk and that is extension 251. If I'm not at my own here and I'm 253. Thanks a lot. Bye bye."

    --
    fencepost
    just a little off
  3. Re:User action? by E+IS+mC(Square) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Right on. Here is what Google says: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=7625b775a05e9401&hl=en

  4. Re:I dont want to listen to my voice mails by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is user error not google error. The users made these voicemails public and google indexed them. They realize some people may not want them public and indexed outside of their own site and have stopped indexing that location. This is a stupid user error and nothing more.

    Must be a slow news day if the garbage from boy genius report is making it here.