Recently, it seemed as though the Google Voice app might have had a major security issue that could have resulted in a great privacy concern; if it was not corrected, prying ears might have created legal issues. According to The Boy Genius Report, one of its readers claims that if you type “site:https://www.google.com/voice/fm/* ” into Google, up pop voice messages that belong to random Google Voice accounts.
The messages include traditional voice messages as well as Google Voice’s innovative new feature, transcribed voice messages. What was most worrisome for Google was the inadvertent invasion of privacy, in which callers’ phone numbers and names are listed.
However, i4u.com reported that there was a possibility that the files were nothing more than promotional or test recordings done by Google. If that were true, it still begs the question: why would these recordings be hidden unless of course they weren’t promotional or test recordings at all?
The Boy Genius Report has reportedly received information that could clear up any confusion Google had created:
“UPDATE: It seems as if these voicemails have been publicly posted/shared online and Google indexes them. Here’s official word:
‘Since the initial idea behind posting a voicemail, was precisely to share it with others, we did not restrict crawling of those messages that users post on the web, but we can certainly understand that users would want to make them public on their sites but not necessarily searchable directly outside of their own website. We made a change to prevent those to be crawled so only the site owner can decide to index them.'”
Techcrunch.com claims that as a result, Google has decided to change its policy and no longer indexes the voice messages.
About Joel Rothman
Joel B. Rothman represents clients in intellectual property infringement litigation involving patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, defamation, trade libel, unfair competition, unfair and deceptive trade practices, and commercial matters. Joel’s litigation practice also includes significant focus on electronic discovery issues such as e-discovery management and motion practice relating to e-discovery.
