A glitch was recently found affecting Google Allo powered by Google's Assistant. It might be prudent to lay low for the meantime with your searches, as the messaging app may not be able to keep secrets.
According to Recode, Google Allo through Google Assistant has been found to share its user's search history with other users in the middle of text conversations. The flaw was discovered when a user asked the bot a question and got a reply with links from a previous search.
The Assistant is not as perfect, and sometimes give responses totally unrelated to the query at hand, other times, it will respond with an answer to previous questions, additionally, it then reveals previous search queries.
According to Recode writer Tess Townsend, she was in a text conversation with a friend and invoked Google Assistant to ask a question it responded with a link from Harry Potter fan website Pottermore. The result was not from her search history but that of her friend from a few days back.
According to Digital Trends, Google Allo also treats personal and sensitive information inconsistently. When Townsend asked the Assistant "What is my job?" during the same conversation, the AI responded with Google Maps outlining an address she had saved from a previous setting and shared the information without asking for permission. However, when asked later in the conversation "What is my name?" it asked privately "Can I share this?"
Google recently introduced a new bot, @meet that facilitates meetings in Google's new Hangouts Chat app for G suite customers. It would be damaging if @meet bot began sharing scheduling details, or perhaps share calendar schedules that are meant to be private.
The problem might have stemmed from Google Allo's personal reminders feature. Google Assistant gained the ability to store contacts, calendar appointments reservations, phone numbers, and more with a simple query. Accessing @google in an Allo conversation pulls up the Assistant, tapping its icon will show all information it has. This information can then be shared with another chat participant.
This flaw has been reported to Google, and the company promptly replied that it was notified that the Assistant is not working as intended. Accordingly, the issue has now been addressed and fixed. As for Hangouts, Google said that Hangouts and @meet are not related to Assistant in Allo.
Even with Google's response that the issue has been fixed, it is still best to observe invoking the Assistant during actual conversations. Allo has been criticized for privacy issues in the past. For now, it would be best to delete chat history and not needed messages, or conversations.
Also, if applicable choose to go incognito mode to end-to-end encryption, and set a timer to automatically delete messages from your device, and advise your contact to do the same to ensure no surprises pop up in other conversations.
