Google is collecting troves of data from downgraded Nest thermostats

https://www.theverge.com/news/820600/google-nest-learning-thermostat-downgraded-data-collection

by sdoering • 8 months ago

39 23 8 months ago

So even their thinly-vailed claim of using the data for support and "issue diagnostics" falls flat, because they don't even provided support for the device at all. It's just data collection.

Even claiming it's for academic research datasets would be a better excuse.

gruez6• 8 months ago

Seems far more likely that they use a microservices architecture, and while they decommed the frontend that allows users to adjust their thermostats, they haven't bothered decomming the telemetry data ingestion services yet.

giancarlostoro3• 8 months ago

I still have the screenshot somewhere. About four years ago, me and my wife were at her sister's home. As I talk to her husband about the paved driveway he fixed up the day before, in front of their Nest camera doorbell thingymajig, he says the words "yeah I saw I could buy like airport grade tar, and I thought to myself, why would I need that for a car?" the next day, I pop open Instagram. Lo and behold, something I never googled, an ad for airport grade tar shows up on Instagram. I'm told that "no they're not listening" and "they use your debit card info to make educated guesses" how in God's green earth would this have happened, I have never bought any level of tar for one, nor googled it, nor ever intended on it.

Idk man, I'm a skeptic that they're not listening in some weird way. Not to mention both of my wife restrict which apps get camera and microphone access. It's uncanny that things we talk about but never google / look up wind up as ads within a day if not hours.

Another fun one was the time a friend was telling me about a niche ramen, by brand name on Discord. I pop open Facebook, what do I see? The EXACT ramen brand is the very next ad. If they aren't watching us for ad revenue I'm going to go crazy with all these insane coincidences.

gruez6• 8 months ago

Idk man, I'm a skeptic that they're not listening in some weird way. Not to mention both of my wife restrict which apps get camera and microphone access. It's uncanny that things we talk about but never google / look up wind up as ads within a day if not hours.

Surely this is easy to test? Come up with a list of 100 topics. Of those, randomly choose 50. Work them into your conversations, and collect all the ads you've seen. Note down how ads you get for the 50 topics you've chosen compared to the topics you haven't chosen. Better yet, give your phone to your friend and have him say the ads, so you don't get confirmation bias.

This is all very easy to do, and the conspiracy that facebook/google/whatever is secretly listening to you isn't exactly fringe either. Yet, I'm not of any rigorous testing that proves it's real. While absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, it's a good reason to be skeptical.

codedokode• 8 months ago

Let's also consider this theoretically from business point of view. If you were an ad network, and you could listen to what your customers talk about, would you use it or not?

grigri9072• 8 months ago

I'm tempted to try this experiment, but I get stuck at "what if my list of 100 things is subconsciously skewed by ads I'm already seeing?"

It's the ads I'm seeing, but aren't registering on a conscious level that concern me. I think we see far more ads than we are aware of.

strogonoff3• 8 months ago

In 2019, I have done an experiment: talk about a conspicuous topic in presence of an unlocked Google Pixel. Minutes later there were suggestions of relevant to that topic articles in Google app.

It is not difficult to believe that if it is available to Google itself, it will be available to whomever that pays for it. That is their business model, after all.

The relevant settings are part of your Google account[0], and as of 7 months ago (which is the last time I checked) KB said:

Web & App Activity saves your searches and activity from other Google services in your Google Account. You may get more personalized experiences…
When Web & App Activity is on, you can include audio recordings from your interactions with Google Search, Assistant, and Maps as part of your activity.

Speaking in presence of a phone with relevant settings turned on certainly strikes me as something that can qualify as “interaction with Google Assistant”.

The KB article does not mention ads, but I would not be surprised if more uses of your voice activity were hidden somewhere in ToS.

[0] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068?hl=en&co=G...

grigri9072• 8 months ago

I would not at all be surprised if they are listening. But isn't a simpler explanation that your in-law was googling driveway options, clicked through a link to see what the heck airport grad tar even is, and then google saw you were in the same vicinity and guessed you'd have similar interests? I wonder how many other ads you had in common that week, or if he saw ads for the underwater basket weaving course you purchased, etc.

giancarlostoro3• 8 months ago

That still raises the question of HOW because I never used their Wi-Fi neither has my wife. So Nest uniquely identified my voice, captured the conversation and told Facebook I must want airport grade tar?

izend2• 8 months ago

As soon as Cody Kociemba open sources his firmware I'm going to apply it to my Nest 1st gen. It is ridiculous Google is turning off the support, it is probably because they don't want to support the old API or something...

dangus• 8 months ago

I just threw my unsupported Nest in the trash, just like Google wanted, and got something else.

After all, that’s what they want me to do. Well, their first preference would be for me to buy another one.

Even if I were to put some kind of open source thing on it, I don’t want visitors to my house to see Nest hardware and for Google to get that slight amount of free advertising.

izend2• 8 months ago

What a waste... I like the style of it, still works fine after 10 years and it works with old furnaces. The environmentalists should be all over Google for this debacle.

time4tea• 8 months ago

Real time pressure information is valuable when being reported from lots of geographically dispersed devices. Its a way of tracking weather fronts. The "discontinued" device is still a little google money printer.

Google is collecting troves of data from downgraded Nest thermostats

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