Microsoft: Kinect always on, but privacy a 'top priority'

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

"The Kinect has a variety of settings," he said. "You know, it's always available to the system, so ... you can count, as an application developer or a game developer, [that] everyone's going to have a Kinect. You always have that stream available. And then, you know, there are settings, obviously, in the console to be able to change the settings of how your Kinect is used, if you're interested."

The always-on functionality even when the console is powered down comes courtesy of "multiple power states," he said. At its lowest setting, which Microsoft refers to as "wake on voice," the peripheral is "listening" for specific commands.

The Kinect will "be just listening enough to know that, 'Hey, I heard something interesting. Somebody's probably trying to wake me up.' It sends it to the console for confirmation, and then it can really power up to that high-power state."

"The new Kinect is listening for a specific cue, like 'Xbox on,'" the spokesperson said. "We know our customers want and expect strong privacy protections to be built into our products, devices and services, and for companies to be responsible stewards of their data. Microsoft has more than 10 years of experience making privacy a top priority. Kinect for Xbox 360 was designed and built with strong privacy protections in place and the new Kinect will continue this commitment."

Source: http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/21/4353580/kinect-always-listening-on-xbox-one-privacy-is-a-top-priority

[dead.cell]

Might be listening too well actually...

[j2006]

People are way too paranoid. They have no need for 'sound data collecting'... and they're smart enough not to do that if they want to keep in business, plus the device would obviously definitely overheat and blow up if it was going to be full on recording everything. Also, they aren't someone like Google, who collects wifi names and passwords... lol.

All it simply does is wait for you to give a "Xbox on" command. This is why you need to use a commands to turn it on and not natural voice like the rest of the platform (e.g. "yo turn on Xbox") lol.

[notchinese]

This is good, and very handy.

[Torolol]

Microsoft has more than 10 years of experience making privacy a top priority.

but MS already exisited since 1975? and today is 2013,

thats means 27% years history (10 out of 38) of microsoft concerned about privacy.

And certainly this 10 years+ can't be the recent year, right?:

- Chinese version of MS Skype definetely NOT making privacy 'a top priority'.

- And lets not forgot about last xbox entertainment awards, when voters stripped of their privacy because MS neglecting security to makes the privacy 'a top priority'.

But, such empty lip services always works for sheeps & fanboys :) .