More than half of Americans reported receiving at least one scam call per day in 2024. To combat the rise of sophisticated conversational scams that deceive victims over the course of a phone call, we introduced Scam Detection late last year to U.S.-based English-speaking Phone by Google public beta users on Pixel phones.
We use AI models processed on-device to analyze conversations in real-time and warn users of potential scams. If a caller, for example, tries to get you to provide payment via gift cards to complete a delivery, Scam Detection will alert you through audio and haptic notifications and display a warning on your phone that the call may be a scam.
Yeah Google claims it’s not recording, storing or being sent the conversations or sharing them with anyone, and that this is all done ‘on-device’.
The thing is, I don’t trust them. At all.
Maybe the terms and conditions will silently change. Maybe their definitions of “recording” and “save” will change. Maybe they’re blatantly lying and are willing to pay a fine if they get caught.
Google’s whole business model is harvesting and selling people’s data, so I have to assume the worst intentions.