Neon, the app that pays you to share your audio recordings with an AI system, says that it will return despite its recent massive security breach.
The app shot up the App Store ratings after promising to pay users hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year for allowing their audio conversations to be used to train AI chatbots …
The Neon app
Neon made headlines last week when it became the second most popular social app in the App Store. It also became the 6th most popular app overall.
It claims to only record your side of the call unless both parties are using the app, but it’s not entirely clear how true this is.
When you make a call through the Neon app, it’s recorded. If you’re the only Neon user on the call, we’ll only record your side. If both people are using Neon, we’ll record both sides—as long as at least one person starts the call in the app. Don’t worry, our technology automatically filters out names, numbers, and other personal details.
One cybersecurity expert and privacy attorney suggested that the company may in fact record both sides of the call and then remove the other party’s words from the final transcript.
The massive security breach
As if the app weren’t already a privacy nightmare, it was quickly found to have a truly incredible security vulnerability.
Neon has gone offline, at least for now, after a security flaw allowed anyone to access the phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts of any other user, TechCrunch can now report […] To make matters worse, TechCrunch also revealed that, based on the transcripts and call recordings it accessed, some users were trying to game the app and maximize their payouts by secretly recording real-world conversations of people who didn’t know they were being recorded.
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