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Google Backs Off On Previously Announced Allo Privacy Feature (theverge.com)
When Google first unveiled its Allo messaging app, the company said it would not keep a log of chats you have with people when in incognito mode. The company released Allo for iOS and Android users last night, and it seems it is reneging on some of those promises. The Verge reports:The version of Allo rolling out today will store all non-incognito messages by default -- a clear change from Google's earlier statements that the app would only store messages transiently and in non-identifiable form. The records will now persist until the user actively deletes them, giving Google default access to a full history of conversations in the app. Users can also avoid the logging by using Alo's Incognito Mode, which is still fully end-to-end encrypted and unchanged from the initial announcement. Like Hangouts and Gmail, Allo messages will still be encrypted between the device and Google servers, and stored on servers using encryption that leaves the messages accessible to Google's algorithms. According to Google, the change was made to improve the Allo assistant's smart reply feature, which generates suggested responses to a given conversation. Like most machine learning systems, the smart replies work better with more data. As the Allo team tested those replies, they decided the performance boost from permanently stored messages was worth giving up privacy benefits of transient storage.
the Allo team .. decided .. was worth giving up privacy benefits
That is not for the dev team to decide. Let the user decide it. But off course, this is Google. There Is No Such Thing As Privacy.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Why does anyone trust Google anymore? They are so far beyond evil it's not even funny.
When Google first unveiled its Allo messaging app, the company said it would not keep a log of chats you have with people when in incognito mode. The version of Allo rolling out today will store all non-incognito messages by default
The first sentence talks about INCOGNITO messages and the second about NON-INCOGNITO ones.
I've seen the same question being asked everywhere and since there's been no official answer, I'm going to go with "internal politics".
No company is immune from it. Even engineers have politics. It's what greases the wheels of human interactions.
So I'm going to guess it's the same story here. Someone came up with a nifty way to do IM, presented it to their boss, it got pushed up until it became a competing project. And instead of integrating the projects together, the teams were forced to fight for resources. Meanwhile everyone who could have ordered the integration is busy maintaining their position and trying to look like they're worth the megabucks they're being paid. Instead of, you know, actually managing things, communicating with other groups inside the same company, and so forth. Remember your game theory here.
It's not all that hard to picture. Alphabet is just another company.
No privacy? Use Signal.
One more time, with feelings: use Signal. Use Signal. Use Signal.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I could imagine it was a bit like an engineer pondering "Hey, I know something! If we implement an IM where people can communicate anonymously and without the fear that their communication is recorded, we could get a ton of security conscious people to use it! And there isn't one like that right now, at least not in the public view, every other IM has of course all the features I'd want to implement, but they all also include corporate snooping."
This went up and down the various offices, changed hands, went from one table to the next, until one of the higher ups saw it and said "That's a great idea, and let's add corporate snooping so we can monetize it".
And so the 99th IM with exactly the same "feature" set nobody wants was created.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"...As the Allo team tested those replies, they decided the performance boost from permanently stored messages was worth giving up privacy benefits of transient storage."
Chuckle. Chort. Snigger. Guffaw...
Why do they even bother to TRY an LIE anymore?
Why the hell would I use a platform purposefully made so that Google can datamine the living shit out of my personal interactions with all my friends and family and spam me with ads while I am talking to them so they can sell me ads to the highest bidder and make more money? It's the equivalents of pigs saying "Wow this slaughter house is so cool, they have free food and it's so comfortable! I think I'm going to stay here!". No thank you. I will keep using Signal and Telegram. Anyone who cares about these gimmicky features is a retard.