[jrochkind1]

As far as "now playing",what they say the software does may be quite clever in privacy preserving ways.

But once you have given them access to your microphone, you have to trust that their software does what they say it does, without mistakes or bugs (whether in design or implementation) or accidental security vulnerabilities (possibly maliciously introduced by the NSA or who knows).

If you do not give them access to your microphone (assuming the OS access controls are themselves working; but that's a much smaller attack area), you do not need to understand trust anything.

[pseudosavant]

And this is from a company that forgot to tell people that the flashy smart thermostat they bought last year has had a mic in it the whole time.

They are a company that will only pay attention to privacy when forced to by an existential threat. It just isn't in their company DNA to care about user privacy. They aren't the customers.

[hertzrat]

What do you mean a microphone in a thermostat? You mean nest?

[deadmutex]

I know Ecobee Thermostat has a mic built in... but not Nest Thermostat.

So, OP is likely mistaken in their comment.

[deadmutex]

> that the flashy smart thermostat they bought last year has had a mic in it the whole time.

Note to readers: This is false.

EDIT: If you're downvoting, please provide evidence. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and OPs post increases it.

EDIT #2: Here is Rishi Chandra, GM of Nest: "Putting a microphone on a thermostat, I actually don't think makes any sense"

[tempest_]

https://www.cnet.com/news/google-calls-nests-hidden-micropho...

It was in their security hub which is perhaps better or worse than the thermostat depending on your view.

[deadmutex]

My understanding is that security hub announced glass break detection from day 1. And that feature uses a microphone to listen to glass breaks... so I wasn't surprised. But, I guess that's not obvious to everyone, so they could've put it on the box.

And, I just didn't HN readers to think there was a mic on the thermostat, so I was correcting that.

[frenchy]

Having a microphone to detect broken glass is very much not obvious. As someone completely unfamiliar with the problem space, I would have assumed the normal solsolution was something along the lines of: run a current throught the glass and check the voltage "drop".

[deadmutex]

I could see this if you connected the device to the system that monitored this. But since you never do that in the install process, I am not sure why you'd assume that's how the system would work.

[PhantomGremlin]

you have to trust

Remember when Google sent hundreds if not thousands of cars all around the world and 'accidentally' hoovered up massive amounts of information?

I'm sure it was all an innocent mistake. Google are certainly worthy of our trust! /s

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-ad...