Spinvox questioned about voice to SMS conversion ethics
Privacy: Thurs 23th July 2009
BBC today reports on their investigation and recent allegations against Voice technology company Spinvox. Spinvox is a UK company that offers a service, which converts voice messages into SMS messages.
The company claim that they are using advanced speech recognition software to convert messages, but after talking to employees, the BBC have now found that most messages are not simply transcribed by a computer system, but by call centre staff in South Africa and the Philippines. BBC have also found a picture of on transcribed message with sensitive commercial information on a Facebook group set up by previous call centre staff.
Although Spinvox do not want to provide any factual data about the proportion of voice messages that are converted by staff, it does say that messages occasionally have to be checked by "conversion experts", but that all messages are anonymised and cannot be linked to the sender.
Spinvox customers are not being made aware of the message handling and how messages are read outside the EU, which raises concerns about privacy standards. Spinvox has not been transparent about their methods and have also not submitted any 'cross EU border activities' on the UK Data Protection Register.
After the investigation, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is urging Spinvox "to ensure that its entry on the data protection register is both accurate and complete, especially with regards to the transfer of personal data outside the European Economic Area".
Whereas this story is not directly linked to mobile marketing, it is still raising major issues of trust amongst mobile users. There is nothing to prevent the messages being converted by people as oppose to machines, but the subject of privacy is becoming an increasing issue for users. In addition, it highlights the need for ethical and legal considerations of international data handling and international mobile marketing campaigns.
Article Links
Read the story in full at BBC News.
