14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s Allo is a popular messaging application that runs on Android smartphones and includes integration with Google Assistant, which already started rolling out to phones other than Pixel and Pixel XL. However, Recode found some privacy issues in Allo.
Apparently, Allo has the capacity to reveal your Google search history to people you message, as long as it’s integrated with Google Assistant. Google’s AI virtual assistant has been available on Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones and some other Google products.
But recently, the company announced that it would make the AI virtual assistant available to other Android-running smartphones and some have already started receiving it. Google Assistant in Allo can be used for searching restaurants in a certain area while in the middle of a conversation with a friend. The feature makes it easy for users to get all sorts of info, without having to leave the app and pause conversations.
Google Assistant seems to share personal info in chats
The report mentions that Assistant sometimes responds with answers unrelated to questions at hand or respond with an answer to an earlier question. At this point, the app could reveal previous search queries.
In the middle of a conversation, Assistant was requested to identify itself, at which point it responded with a “link from Harry Potter fan website Pottermore. The link led to an extract from ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,’ the fifth book in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. But the response was not merely a non sequitur. It was a result related to previous searches my friend said he had done a few days earlier,” the report reveals.
Google Assistant should check with users before sharing personal information during an Allo chat, but the safeguard doesn’t seem to always work. In the same chat, Google Assistant shared a personal address saved under the user’s Google Maps account. Google has yet to comment on the matter.