MICROSOFT has admitted that its staff have been listening to audio of Xbox owners speaking in their homes.

The company claims the snooping scheme was set up to improve the Xbox's voice command features.

Microsoft has admitted that complete strangers may have listened to your private chats at home Credit: Credit: Jeramey Lende / Alamy Stock Photo

Xbox consoles have a built-in feature that lets you control the system using your voice.

It's supposed to be triggered using voice commands like 'Xbox' or 'Hey Cortana'.

But sometimes Xbox would record your voice after being mistakenly triggered – without your knowledge.

Microsoft then shipped these recordings off to contractors who listened to the audio tapes in full, as revealed by Motherboard.

Microsoft contractors were 'grading' the voice assistant built into your Xbox Credit: © 2019 SOPA Img

It comes just one week after Microsoft was caught secretly listening to your Skype conversations.

Microsoft's Xbox "snooping" was related to the Xbox voice commands system.

Built into Xbox is a virtual assistant called Cortana – which works like Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa.

Microsoft uses third-party contractors to check audio recordings from these tools.

This is designed to make sure the systems work as intended, but can also lead to contractors listening to private chats in your home.

One former contractor even claims he was told not to tell people about his job.

"I recall being explicitly told 'you probably shouldn't mention it was for Microsoft' during the hiring process," the contractor told Motherboard.

Xbox spying scandal – is it so bad? Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate at Comparitech.com, told The Sun... "Making a voice recognition and translation service necessitates that humans listen to at least some of the audio.

"Without listening to the original recording, how can Microsoft know whether or not it's working? And how could they improve it?

"The recordings are de-identified so there is no personal information tied to them other than the contents of the actual recording.

"Microsoft clearly states that recordings and transcriptions are analysed to verify accuracy and make corrections.

"The fact that humans are performing that analysis might make users uneasy, but I don't think there's much risk to end users.

That is, unless a contractor steals recordings and gives them to a Vice reporter. Microsoft ought to take steps to ensure this can't happen in the future.

"To me, this story is more about a data breach at a Microsoft contractor than the fact that humans analyse voice recordings.

"I recommend users refrain from revealing any identifying information while using their Xbox or Cortana. Unless you identify yourself in the recording, there's almost no way for a human analyst to figure out who you are."

Microsoft isn't the only firm to be caught up in a spying scandal.

Amazon was recently revealed to have been listening to your private chats through Alexa.

Apple was caught using contractors who listened to your private conversations through Siri.

And Google admitted to listening to your conversations at home through Android phones and the Google Assistant virtual helper.

YouTuber puts every games console in one ultimate gaming station

In a statement, Microsoft said: "We stopped reviewing any voice content taken through Xbox for product improvement purposes a number of months ago, as we no longer felt it was necessary, and we have no plans to re-start those reviews.

"We occasionally review a low volume of voice recordings sent from one Xbox user to another when there are reports that a recording violated our terms of service and we need to investigate.

"This is done to keep the Xbox community safe and is clearly stated in our Xbox terms of service.

"We’ve long been clear that we collect voice data to improve voice-enabled services and that this data is sometimes reviewed by vendors."

Xbox 2 news and rumours – what we know so far Here's what we know about the next-gen Xbox... In June 2019, Microsoft revealed that its all-new console would be coming out in 2020

It doesn't have an official name yet - for now, Microsoft are still using the development code-name Project Scarlett

As with the next PlayStation, it's going to use super speedy 'solid state' storage to drastically reduce or even totally eliminate loading times

This means your games should start up almost instantly, and there won't be lengthy pauses between scenes, or when moving from one part of a game's world to another

It's going to be able to play older games too, with Microsoft making big promises about backwards compatibility

"Thousands of games across four console generations will look and play best on Project Scarlett," they say, referring to the original Xbox, the Xbox 360, the Xbox One and the new console

The third area where they matched Sony is the chips at the console's heart - the brains of Project Scarlett is the same AMD Navi technology at the heart of Sony's next console

It's not quite identical to the PlayStation chips, as both are custom-made for the companies in question

AMD promised Sony's "special sauce" was built into their chips, while Microsoft describe the core of their new box is a "custom-designed AMD processor"

Xbox boss Phil Spencer also revealed that processor would have hardware dedicated to ray-tracing

Ray-tracing is a new technology just making it into the most expensive gaming PCs that makes lighting and sound incredibly realistic by calculating the exact path of each ray of light or sound wave through transparent objects and off reflective surfaces

This gives you much more realistic lighting and reflections as well as much more natural looking materials and objects

Sony has confirmed the next PlayStation will have something similar, but hasn't revealed if the console will have hardware specifically dedicated to it

Finally, Microsoft also revealed that Halo: Infinite, which is first revealed at the same briefing last year, is going to launch with the new Xbox

The latest chapter in the story of Master Chief will release alongside Project Scarlett devices in time for "Holidays 2020", meaning around mid-November

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Do you trust any tech company to respect your privacy? Let us know in the comments!

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