Spinvox privacy issues exposed?
23rd July 2009
A UK telecoms firm could be putting customers' mobile call privacy at risk, an investigation has revealed.
Spinvox offers a service that converts mobile voice messages into text using speech recognition software.
Messages can then be delivered to the subscriber's email inbox, blog, wall or space on a social networking site.
But a BBC investigation has revealed that messages may have been heard by call centre staff abroad, raising privacy concerns.
In a statement, the company said: 'Speech algorithms do not learn without human intervention and all speech systems require humans for learning - Spinvox does this in real-time.
'The actual proportion of messages automatically converted is highly confidential and sensitive data.'
Commenting on the investigation, Rory Cellan-Jones explained on the BBC's dot-life technology blog that employees have indicated a large proportion of the translation is done using people, rather than machines.