Google's Phone and Messaging apps for Android were reportedly collecting and sending data to Google without users' consent and without an option to opt out of it. The data included a hash of the message text and time and duration of calls, a paper by Dublin professor Douglas Leith said. Leith also shared his findings with Google and suggested changes. Whereas, Google said it plans to test monitoring user health through their smartphone microphones and cameras. We're investigating whether built-in microphones can detect heartbeats and help enable early detection of heart valve disorders, Google AI's Senior Research Director Greg Corrado said. He added that Google will also test if photos from smartphones can be used to detect diseases like diabetes. The report says, Google has been collecting extremely detailed data about the calls you make via the Phone app and the text messages exchanged on your Android phone. Google used these Android apps to export massive amounts of data to its servers, and it did so without informing users or obtaining consent. This sort of behaviour might go against privacy protections that should exist in Android by law in some markets (like the EU’s GDPR policies). It could be seen as spying on users.

The report comes at a time when Google keeps trying to convince users that user privacy is important. But while Android users will-fully agree to Google tracking them and collecting personal data that it can turn into ads, they’ve never explicitly told Google that it could collect sensitive phone and text data. In this case, Google might be getting shorter hashed versions of the texts you sent and received in Messages. But it can’t see the actual text, as they’re turned into alphanumeric gibberish. Still, given enough computing resources and time, someone might decode some of the shorter messages. However, the apps do not disclose these data collection practices. But Google requires Android developers to inform user.