Earlier this week, when Nuance introduced its free Dragon Dictation software for the iPhone, which turns speech into text, it was met with an immediate backlash.
The sore point was a line in the End User License Agreement (EULA) that alerted users that Nuance would upload the names from a phone’s contact list to its servers.
“This app goes through your contact list and sends data back to their servers. This level of privacy breach should e [sic] made clear in the description, not just the EULA,” wrote a user with the screen name “Something Witty” in the iTunes customer reviews. Many similarly outraged posts appear on the site.
But as you might expect from a company whose software listens to what people say, it has heard its customers and has clarified what contact data or the app collects and why.
The app only uploads names, which it uses to improve accuracy when the phone owner speaks those names, said Michael Thompson a Senior Vice President of Nuance Mobile. “We don’t take any contact information, no addresses, no e-mails, no phone numbers,” he said.
The assumption is that people dictating on the iPhone are writing e-mails and texts to people in their contacts list. Putting those names on the server makes it easier for the software to recognize them when spoken, said the company. “When we launched that was stated in a way that didn’t make it clear.” said Mr. Thompson. “Confusion is never a good thing, and in the next version, we are going to make name capture optional.”
Despite privacy concerns, the app, which was launched this week, has already logged more than 1,000 reviews on iTunes.
Dragon Dictation works in a fashion similar to the desktop versions. You simply speak, and it puts what you say into type. Just as with its desktop versions, accuracy is good, but far from perfect. Still, even accounting for corrections, the app saves a lot of typing.