Has Chromodo taken steps to avoid the privacy issue reported below?
Yesterday, news broke that Google has been stealth downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google.
And I would like to ask the same question reference Dragon
Thank you for the warning about this a_l_a_n
Using the latest beta version of Comodo Dragon it shows
[b]Microphone[/b] Yes [b]Audio Capture Allowed[/b] Yes
Hopefully Comodo will pay attention to this, investigate and then act in the interest of the users privacy, anything less would, in my personal opinion, be disgraceful for a product that claims to be about privacy.
Edit: However it also says
[b]Hotword Search Enabled[/b] No [b]Always-on Hotword Search Enabled[/b] No [b]Hotword Audio Logging Enabled[/b] No
So whether or not it’s listening… I couldn’t tell you, hopefully Shane or another Comodo employee can shed some light on this.
We definitely need to hear an OFFICIAL response from Comodo staff on this issue - this is the report from Version 42.2.2.138 –
About Voice Search
Comodo Dragon 42.2.2.138 ()
OS Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 SP1 64 bit
NaCl Enabled No
Microphone No
Audio Capture Allowed Yes
Current Language en-US
Hotword Previous Language
Hotword Search Enabled No
Always-on Hotword Search Enabled No
Hotword Audio Logging Enabled No
Field trial
New Hotwording Enabled Yes
Start Page State No Start Page Service
Extension Id undefined
Extension Version undefined
Extension Path undefined
Extension State undefined
Shared Module Id undefined
Shared Module Version undefined
Shared Module Path undefined
Shared Module State undefined
I’d also like to know HOW Comodo managed to let this slip by when they are supposed to be the pinnacle of security and privacy?!
This sounds like the implementation of Google’s voice search tool that’s been on Android for some time already. Perhaps it’s true that Google could record everything that’s said in your room (but I’m not yet convinced of that). But even if they can, just think how many billions f hours of voice data they must have from all the Chrome users worldwide, and how much storage space that will occupy (and at what cost?) and what will they do with it? How will they analyse it? How long will it take to analyse? And does anybody care that you had a row with Auntie Emm last week?
Storm > Teacup
No intention to use such a capability does not excuse said capability or even prove that they aren’t using it anyway, I thought we had learned that lesson from the relatively recent NSA leaks, and in comparison to the NSA who goes to any length of securing their interest, which mostly is the security of the USA, Google is much more interested in targeted advertising than probably anything else and there your little “row with auntie” may be gold worth.
The way it seems to work currently is the same way it works on Android, it listens to your microphone locally until you say “OK Google” and then anything after that is sent to Google’s servers for processing (speech to text conversion) and who is to say that isn’t used for anything else? Who is to say that they haven’t added other keywords more in their interest, or who is to say they don’t work with the NSA or others who have other motives and keywords, perhaps a keyword is the name of an activist group who stands up for freedom and no censorship?
Again, who says they’re even doing anything of that? No intention does not excuse the capability. Oh and lets not forget that this part is a closed source download for an open source browser (Chromium) which is ever so suspicious.
Also I think it’s relatively fine if we were talking about Chrome here, but we’re talking about Comodo’s browsers which are meant to protect your privacy by removing things just like this. For Chrome this may be a storm in a teacup, however for Comodo it’s a storm in a teacup that is labeled “storm free”, for who truly wants to use a cup with a storm in it?
Exactly. I am going to avoid all chromium browsers until this is fixed.
Tags: confirmed, fixed-upstream, help, security, upstream Found in version chromium-browser/43.0.2357.65-1 Fixed in version chromium-browser/43.0.2357.81-1 Done: Michael Gilbert Forwarded to https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=491435