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Apr 22 15 6:36 AM
New Barbie Sends Kids' Private Thoughts To The Cloud
Unveiled last month, Hello Barbie is a clever toy with a little bit of an oversharing problem. With a microphone, Hello Barbie can listen to what children tell it. With a computer and a Wi-Fi connection, Hello Barbie can take those words, encrypt them, and then send them over the internet to a cloud server where voice recognition software listens to the recording and then picks a reply for Hello Barbie to send back. Only there's a minor hitch: it might be illegal to record children and then store that information elsewhere. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which became law in April 2000, sets out strict rules for obtaining information from minors online. These rules prohibit the collection of information from children under the age of 13 unless there is parental consent, plus a way for the parents to find out what information was collected and then obtain that information, or unless the information is used to respond to the child as a one-off and isn't stored in a retrievable way. Oren Jacob is the CEO of ToyTalk, the company that partnered with Mattel to create Hello Barbie. He says: All of ToyTalk's products in market have been designed to meet or exceed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and have also been independently verified as such by KidSAFE+. While the underlying technology of our products works much like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, ToyTalk products never search the open web for answers. Responses are carefully crafted by our own writing team, and conversations recorded through our products are never used to advertise or market to children or anyone. Hello Barbie isn't the only device that wants to store your thoughts in the cloud. Eavesdropping done by Samsung SmartTVs made news, but it's hardly alone, and plenty of devices, ranging from voice search to Xbox Kinect also record voices and translate them into information without public outcry or accusations of criminal intent.
Unveiled last month, Hello Barbie is a clever toy with a little bit of an oversharing problem. With a microphone, Hello Barbie can listen to what children tell it. With a computer and a Wi-Fi connection, Hello Barbie can take those words, encrypt them, and then send them over the internet to a cloud server where voice recognition software listens to the recording and then picks a reply for Hello Barbie to send back. Only there's a minor hitch: it might be illegal to record children and then store that information elsewhere.
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which became law in April 2000, sets out strict rules for obtaining information from minors online. These rules prohibit the collection of information from children under the age of 13 unless there is parental consent, plus a way for the parents to find out what information was collected and then obtain that information, or unless the information is used to respond to the child as a one-off and isn't stored in a retrievable way. Oren Jacob is the CEO of ToyTalk, the company that partnered with Mattel to create Hello Barbie. He says:
All of ToyTalk's products in market have been designed to meet or exceed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and have also been independently verified as such by KidSAFE+. While the underlying technology of our products works much like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana, ToyTalk products never search the open web for answers. Responses are carefully crafted by our own writing team, and conversations recorded through our products are never used to advertise or market to children or anyone.
Hello Barbie isn't the only device that wants to store your thoughts in the cloud. Eavesdropping done by Samsung SmartTVs made news, but it's hardly alone, and plenty of devices, ranging from voice search to Xbox Kinect also record voices and translate them into information without public outcry or accusations of criminal intent.
MY EARLIEST Google search — the earliest one Google remembers, at least — was for “tetanus shot.” My most recent was for “Tracy Morgan.” In between, there are 52,493 searches, and Google remembers them all. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. I know Google knows essentially everything there is to know about me — and you probably do, too. With its algorithms and analytics tools, it probably knows more about me than I know about myself (statistically, I most frequently search Google at 10 AM on Tuesdays in March). But presented in its totality, it’s still a bit creepy to look at a history of every single Google search you’ve ever done.The company has now made it possible for you to export that history and download it from its servers. In one ZIP file, you can have a timestamped history of every random bit of trivia or thought you’ve ever had; of every restaurant you’ve ever cared to Yelp; of the times you looked up whether that movie you wanted to see was actually any good.
MY EARLIEST Google search — the earliest one Google remembers, at least — was for “tetanus shot.” My most recent was for “Tracy Morgan.” In between, there are 52,493 searches, and Google remembers them all.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. I know Google knows essentially everything there is to know about me — and you probably do, too. With its algorithms and analytics tools, it probably knows more about me than I know about myself (statistically, I most frequently search Google at 10 AM on Tuesdays in March). But presented in its totality, it’s still a bit creepy to look at a history of every single Google search you’ve ever done.
The company has now made it possible for you to export that history and download it from its servers. In one ZIP file, you can have a timestamped history of every random bit of trivia or thought you’ve ever had; of every restaurant you’ve ever cared to Yelp; of the times you looked up whether that movie you wanted to see was actually any good.
Read more @ http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/google-knows-everything-youve-ever-searched-for-in-case-you-forgot/story-fnjwnhzf-1227313716221
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
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