Not my title! I do think we are being listened to. And location tracked. And it’s being passed on to advertisers. Is it apple though? Probably not is my take away from this article, but I don’t trust plenty of others, and apple still does
People always talk about getting served ads after they talk about something. I think it’s the other way around. The ads put the thought into your brain and then you start talking about it and notice after you’ve already been thinking about it for a while.
While I do suspect they listen, I have pretty solid (anecdotal) evidence they scan text messages. When I bought my house I had no solicitor, I text my buddy to see who he used and he texted me a response.
Started to type into Google to get a number and it was the top suggested search after 2 chars. Nowhere else did I mention this solicitor, hadn’t heard of them before this, have no other searches for this solicitor. It’s not a big firm, it’s not even in my city - only explanation I have is they scanned the messages.
In September, I was using reddit, had an iPhone, etc. I was generally aware of digital privacy, probably moreso than the average person, but by no means was I knowledgeable.
I was running a beta on my iPhone at the time, for context. I had a short conversation with my roommate while my phone was in my pocket. I took it out to text my partner and pressed the dictation button. My phone proceeded to type out the majority of the conversation I had had maybe five minutes earlier with my roommate. Literally ruined my ignorance is bliss and now I have a Pixel with grapheneos and use almost exclusively open source software with a major focus on privacy. Obviously this is an anecdote from some idiot online and I can’t verify what I’m saying at all, but the experience definitely shook me.
Two ways to process voice, on device or on server. Device-based solutions either are very basic and just detect differences between words or need training data based on your voice or they need lots of processing power for more generalized voice recognition. So is your battery draining and phone is often hot because an app is keeping the mic on and keeping the phone from slowing the processor? Other option is to stream the data to the server. This would also increase battery usage as the phone can’t sleep, but might not be as noticeable, but more evident would be your phone using a lot more bandwidth than is reasonable while you aren’t actively using it.
Aw jeez not this again.
ITT:
People saying “They already use every other bit of data they can access, why do you naive optimists think they wouldn’t use the most obvious one?”
vs.
People saying “They already use every other bit of data they can access, why do you naive optimists think they would need to use the most expensive one?”
it’s effective, timely, accurate, and profitable.
ofc they’re gonna use the audio, too; where and when possible.
I used to think the same. I’m all for digital privacy, but listening to a microphone? That’s ridiculous, the legal ramifications would be enormous. Plus, encoding and sending all this data? Not practical, and of course, we are fully aware of confirmation bias and selective memory so for sure those personal anecdotes must be coincidences.
Then it happened to me. I use a VPN, all my devices have a billion types of ad blocking, private DNS, JavaScript disabled by default and so on. Then I mention a product next to my girlfriend, a product that only interested me and I had recently discovered, nothing she was ever aware of… and while I was still right next to her, five minutes later, her phone is showing up ads for said product. Her phone, not mine. The product is not Coca-Cola, it’s not something that often pops up.
What other explanation could there be? The coincidence of the year? They are listening.
The speech recognition software used by digital assistants that come with most modern smartphones would make it trivial to process the audio locally and map the output to your ad profile. Much lighter lift than sending audio recordings.
And a much smaller footprint. It could even be binary data for tweaking your algorithmic profile, say the name of a branded product or in the case of a product with few options just the type of item. Audio runs in the megabytes per minute, transcripts in the kilobytes, but reducing to a conclusion of interest in a single specific item is really very small, hard to notice tbh.
They are absolutely listening. This is very easy to test. Speak around a Google or Amazon or Apple device, and start talking about things you would never buy, never need, have never looked up, and is completely irrelevant for your demographic. You’ll get ads for it anyway by the end of the day or week.
Listen to the Big Tech comments to press and congressional testimony very carefully. They always say something like, ‘Facebook is not spying on your microphone.’ They’re always very carefully wording it as the parent company is not listening to your devices. But they absolutely know either one of their subsidiaries or their partners are listening to your microphone, and feeding the data to them.
My roommate, an iPhone user and English only speaker, left his TV on the Spanish channel with his phone right next to it and left for work. When he came back home and checked his phone, all his Facebook and Twitter ads were in Spanish. This was at least 10 years ago.
I’m always torn on this topic because, yeah there’s hundreds of biases that can be attributed to this phenominon.
IE something becomes a popular topic in your area. Meaning more people in the area start searching the topic in that area, thus advertisers start pushing it to that location.
Obviously ads are also tracking you in 100 ways on what you’ve searched for, looked at etc… which means it could have a good guess of what you are going to talk about, before you do.
But at the same time, I think everyone can think of a lot of stories of things that just seemed to perfect, to out of the blue. For me the big one was 10 years ago when I walked into an attic, said “man it’s fucking dark up here”, opened my phone, and a big ad for a flashlight app popped up.
I think we will need a few more lawsuits such as Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that its virtual assistant, Siri, recorded users’ conversations without their consent before this is no longer treated as confirmation bias or people been paranoid.
My wife used to tell me that her adds would change after discussing something and at first I did not believe her, but it just kept happening again, and again. It reached the point that we would put our phones away, discuss something and there is no change in ads about the topic. If we had our phones near adds would change.This would happen on things that we would not see adds for normally. For example we would discuss a trip to a place we have never been and she would start seeing adds about the destination after that.
This article’s preamble cites this news story as the motivation for writing the rebuttal presented.
ADS
Ads is from advertisement, not adds
Yeah it would be pretty annoying if her active directory domain changed that often.
I’m not saying it’s completely 100% not possible and has never happened in the history of human technology, but the situation is not as ubiquitous as most people seem to think it is.
Don’t get me wrong, collecting and inferring personal information is happening on an epic and ubiquitous scale these days, but for the most part, it’s not the microphones on your devices that are doing the data collection.
Pretty much all my older relatives are completely convinced their phones are listening to their day to day conversations and serving up ads based on those conversations. One of them came to visit me for a week over the summer. One night we had been talking about having asparagus for dinner, and as evidence that their phone was listening to us, the next day they showed me that their news feed was filled with asparagus recipes. Another night, we were talking about one of their medical conditions and the drugs they were taking, and the next day they showed me that they got notifications about a prescription drug for that condition. On another day, we had been talking about a specific actor’s filmography and all their movies that we liked, the next day their streaming video app was suggesting a bunch of content from that actor.
I can understand why this seemed pretty convincing that our phones were listening to us, but consider the simpler explanation.
I live in a rural area where there’s not good cellular reception, so for the most part, our phones are connected via wifi to the same internet connection. Essentially, every device on the property has the same external IP address. So, when I looked up asparagus recipes on my laptop later that night because I wanted to surprise my relative with that specific dish, and when I Googled the prescription medication the relative was taking to see what the side effects where, and when I looked up that actor on IMBD to see what all movies they’d been in, that pretty much gave all the advertisers all the information they needed to start targeting ads and recommendations to folks sharing the same IP address.
Occam’s Razor being what it is, I assume that’s how things went down versus all our conversations being constantly recorded and uploaded to the net to be interpreted and used for the purposes of serving ads.
One of my weirder hobbies is trying to convince people that the idea that companies are listening to you through your phone’s microphone and serving you targeted ads is a conspiracy theory that isn’t true.
ARS said, that reuters said, that users said.
Someone needs a new hobby. “Proof” from 3 layers of journalists interpreting a case that they themself said never went to court. Trying to use evidence of absence as proof will never win any hearts in a debate.
I didn’t seriously believe it happened either for quite some time because confirmation bias is a bitch. But I’ve seen it happen a few times where it would have to be a seriously unlikely coincidence.
If it was searched for in Google, Facebook, apple, or whatever sure
If it was correlated with locality and time, sure.
You can infer a lot from a few searches but there are times where nothing was searched for and a novel concept came out of conversation and book there’s ads and search completion for it.
Maybe, just maybe, someone settling a lawsuit without being found guilty, doesn’t ACTUALLY mean they’re innocent.
So Apple and Google have created the most sophisticated spyware known to man, so undetectable that tens of thousands of developers and researchers have never even seen a sign of it, and then they use the data for ads so sloppily that anyone can prove they’re listening?
I’m sure Apple just paid 95 mil because they were bored.
That Siri was bugged in a way that activated it unintentionally, which then sends recordings to Apple, is not in dispute. Turning that into “they’re always recording your conversations” is a big leap. Why would the whistleblower that revealed the recordings being misused not bother mentioning that?
It was activated at times in which it was unintentional and then they sold that data.
People are saying, and I have observed, extreme coincidences with the ads were timely, They were on novel data that wasn’t thrown through searches, and they weren’t explainable by locality.
You don’t have to be recording 24x7 to get they observed outcome.
Do you have any proof they sold that data? I’d love to know why the plaintiffs settled out of court if they thought they could prove Apple is feeding every voice recording into their ads. They had to pay 5x as much just for slowing down old iPhones, actively selling voice recordings would undoubtedly be worth far more than that.
The issue is that contractors had access to the recordings, which is certainly a breach of privacy, but not a grand conspiracy to target ads.
I’m not going to play move the goal posts with you all day long.
At what point did I move the goalposts? I never denied that the recordings existed. I simply fail to see how someone at Apple would decide that selling private conversations is worth the insane risk.
Quick experiment. If you don’t own a dog or a cat, talk about buying dog or cat food a couple times today.
about buying dog or cat food a couple times today.
I have both, also, if it’s real, you’d have to match up with an advertiser that really wants your profile.
I search for crap all the time but don’t get ads most of the time, then one time, I look up this one kaz air filter and get nothing but ads for it for a week. hundreds of home depot ads.
I love how having both a dog and a cat is somehow dismissive
My big problem isn’t with the concept I could talk about buying parrot food.
But there has to be a vendor out there that says hey whoever I’m buying this data from, I need to put an ad in front of parrot owners.
These are going to be very high cost ads, so whatever products they’re going to sell you probably have a respectable profit margin or respectable expected lifetime value.
Trying to trigger it on purpose, without any idea of who’s advertising or for what is somewhat of a fool’s errand.
I talk to my father on the phone.
We finish.
I receive ads for a very specific thing that we talked about that I’ve never ever looked up.
Same thing with my therapist.
We talk. I receive highly specific ads.
So I’m hearing that you don’t use an adblocker.
Only on Spotify, which is another scandal
It can always be explained by something else. Recency bias being a big one. It’s very possible you saw an ad yesterday as well, but didn’t notice you saw it because you haven’t talked about that item. Talk about it today, see the same ad, and now you think you’re being listened to.
It’s very possible your father googled something after hanging up the phone. There are endless ways they can connect you to knowing your father.
It’s possible someone on the same wifi network as you or your father overheard the conversation and looked it up.
All of these are far more likely than everything you say and do being recorded without anyone ever finding any definitive proof.
Ever had a free free flowing conversation for hours?
You talk about things you wouldn’t possibly think of alone because of the other person.
Im located in Germany ne I guess many of you people are have not yet been victim of this, else you would agree with me.
Except I’ve had experiences that aren’t explainable by alm this:
Discussing a random, never-thought-of-before idea with a friend, in the car. Neither of us had ever thought of this thing before (honestly don’t recall now what it was). Discussed it for 2 minutes, then moved on.
Later we’re both seeing related ads, yet neither of us searched for anything.
And it was something way out of left field for both of us, that neither of us had ever thought of before. The related ads were so jarring that we both told each other about it.
Oh, and my phone was rooted, de-googled (lineage), with heavy restrictions for the apps, no social media (I still don’t have any accounts with any of them, except here), etc. The other phone was an iPhone.
The scary thought here isn’t that they’re actively listening in.
It’s that they know enough about you to know that something will be of interest to you before you even realise it yourself…
If it’s a never before thought of idea how can there possibly be ads for it? No one has ever thought of it and the product doesn’t exist right?
Like I said, there are always other ways. Maybe you searched something related the day before and don’t remember. Maybe your friend did.
There have been ad agencies who have claimed to be able to do this, so they would if they could. https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/
Just because an ad agency makes a claim doesn’t mean it’s true or doable.
Right
yeah it does
Perhaps they track who you talk to and show you ads that are relevant to those people, or their best guess based on two profiles.
I don’t think there’s a data center out there with a live audio stream of literally billions of always-on devices 24/7/365.
Perhaps there’s some local processing first, but devices have permissions for apps, and lights that indicate the mic/camera is in use.
I figure someone would have figured it out by now (reverse engineering, decompiling code), or someone from Google/Apple/Samsung would have leaked it if it were true. Think of the number of people required to keep this secret.
No. With my therapist I talk randomly about so many things. It’s impossible to predict or calculate.
Also I talk to my therapist in person while the phones in my pocket or table.
Edit: also have you ever had a natural flowing conversation? It’s not predictable because you can possibly talk about everything and anything.
And yet my android phone is able to detect what song is playing 24x7 without being a noticeable drain on the battery or using extra data. Doesn’t seem far fetched to be able to do keyword spotting under the same constraints.
Here’s one example of a company getting caught: https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/us/next-time-you-talk-on-your-phone-be-careful-facebook-and-google-are-listening-to-your-conversations/articleshow/113071827.cms
And yet my android phone is able to detect what song is playing 24x7
What is this referring to? Spotify?
On my android it’s called “now playing” and it’s a feature of the os. It even recognizes live cover versions as the song they’re covering sometimes. Claims to do it all local-only without sending data, just always listening and seeing what it recognizes.
It listens to music being played on other devices? I haven’t seen it on my phone.
Or live music played by musicians, in this case.
Maybe it is only for Pixel phones. It’s hard for me to differentiate between pixel features and stock android recently.
Granted, things are getting to the point that it may very well be possible. But these kinds of claims have been around for over a decade, and today my voice control devices still fail to understand me rather regularly.
Not to mention, a song is usually extremely easy to pick out. In a loud bar with background music, your brain tends to pick up the beat and start grooving along with it, even if you don’t realize it most of the time. Compared to the person sitting across the table trying to yell things to you, and you having to resort to lip reading and guesswork.
What is this referring to?
Oh like Shazam
I’ve literally seen advertisements for products that I was talking about but explicitly did not search for or type or anything on any device. All I did was talk about it in real life.
It’s literally a thing that happens, I have seen it happen first-hand.
“I’ve seen it first-hand” isn’t significant evidence because the frequency illusion effect is a thing. If you see dozens of ads a day and ignore them unless you notice them matching something you talked about, you’ll end up thinking ads can track what you talk about whether or not it’s true.
While i understand and agree with the premise, i think it’s lacking context. It is quite disturbing to have an obscure conversation (you know, we’ve never been to tahiti), and suddenly you’re getting banner ads or sponsored results about trips to tahiti.
This is absolutely a thing that happens. It happens to my wife frequently (the amount of times i hear giggling, i was just talking about that! Now I’ve got an ad! What a coincidence!), but i disabled all my google permissions (outside of location for maps), so it doesn’t seem to happen to me at all.
I don’t think every company does this, but some do. I also had to uninstall WhatsApp because my microphone usage was up while i was sleeping. That was quite concerning to discover. Whatsapp claims it’s a bug, but I’m not sure about that.
I would agree with you about the frequency illusion effect IF it weren’t something very specific and niche.
It is literally a thing that happens.
I have worked for an advertising company before (they hid that they were an advertising company) and you would be surprised how sophisticated and scummy ads can be.
Using your search data is bad enough
On Android, I have the mic, location, and camera blocked via the pulldown tiles menu. I turn them on when needed. The OS and some apps like to bitch about this sometimes but it seems to be working ok.
My iphone does not offer these blanket blocking options. It’s a work phone, so I just leave it off unless I need it.
So one of the devices allegedly grabbing keywords from heard conversations, you’d trust with a software based toggle?
I’d only trust hardware toggle.
At this point, it’s the best I can do. I have tape on the selfie camera too. I guess I could bust this pixel 7a open and add physical switches to the cameras and mike, but I’m not real confident in my ability to pull that off. Maybe you can tell me how to do that.
You really trust that the button does what it says it does though??!??
You mean a hardware toggle? Because those can be double checked with some electronic knowledge.
And a software toggle can be checked with some software knowledge if the source is available.
Although chances of code being available are quite low for most mobile devices, not to mention software takes many many hours longer and you’ll have to make sure your build matches the code (which means manually checking the code of every update).
Question for you: Do you manually check every hardware toggle for correctness?
Weird question. A better question would be how hard it is to check. It’s pretty easy. It only requires a multimeter and basic knowledge of electronics. Opening a phone isn’t hard either. You can easily use a clothes iron with a rag in front of it.
