Thousands of privacy infringements have been exposed in a leaked copy of an internal database, 404 Media has reported
US tech giant Google has accidentally collected children’s voice data and leaked information on the trips and home addresses of car pool users, according to a report from 404 Media, citing a leaked copy of an internal database.
The report, published on Monday by the technology news website, said that the database contains thousands of privacy-related incidents over the course of six years, from 2013 to 2018.
404 Media said it obtained the dataset from an anonymous source, and then verified the information. Google has confirmed aspects of its contents, it added.
The incidents reportedly include issues with Google’s own products and data collection practices; vulnerabilities in third-party vendors that Google uses; and mistakes made by staff, contractors, or other people that have impacted Google systems or data.
Most of the previously unreported incidents only impacted a small number of people or were quickly fixed, the report acknowledged.
“Taken as a whole, though, the internal database shows how one of the most powerful and important companies in the world manages, and often mismanages, a staggering amount of personal, sensitive data on people’s lives,” 404 Media wrote.
In one case, a Google speech service recorded the voices of an estimated 1,000 children for about an hour. The team then “deleted all logged speech data from the affected time period,” the report reads.