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Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

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Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#41

Post by abalone »

MichaelGG wrote: post #26
abalone wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the "very dishonest" statements?

Saying that there was no bias in their news selection, when it should be readily apparent that having humans select thing would introduce bias. Not quite outright lying, as you might possibly think they're naive enough to think humans are unbiased, but I don't think they get the benefit of the doubt here. IIRC they also started off saying it was all algorithmic.

Can you cite where they said it was "all" algorithmic?

Their investigation found "no evidence of systematic political bias." So, not sure where the very dishonest statement is here.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#42

Post by piyush_soni »

Nullabillity wrote: post #39
piyush_soni wrote: post #18

Android M above ( N ) you can disable various permissions asked by an app. I have disabled everything for Facebook (except storage). No location, contacts, microphone, calendar, phone, sms or even camera. You're not allowed here, facebook. So it can't do much damage for at least those versions of Android.

For the record, that feature was added in Marshmallow, not N.

Oops, yes, my mistake (I meant M).

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#43

Post by HannibalLecter »

therealmarv wrote: post #37
eddz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of alternatives to Whatsapp. I don't even have it installed on my phone.

It's not about the program. It's about the network... you cannot switch a network when all your friends and colleagues use WhatsApp and their groups. But I'm happy WhatsApp is more secure than most of the alternatives with good E2E encryption support.

>you cannot switch a network when all your friends and colleagues use WhatsApp

Ad Populum! That is the prevailing attitude, however I would stipulate that you can most certainly choose not to follow a pack of lemmings over a cliff.

If your place of work requires you to use Whatsapp, they are required to provide a device for you to use it.

You can always rely on email if you have a message you need someone to receive.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#44

Post by yoz-y »

dawnerd wrote: post #33
13hours wrote: post #7

The impact on battery life alone would be insane if this wee true I'm guessing.

Funny you mention that: http://bgr.com/2016/02/01/facebook-android-app-battery-life-... http://www.cnet.com/how-to/improve-iphone-battery-life-delet... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-iphone-battery-... Now is that because of voice? Very unlikely.

On iPhone the problem was that FB left a bug (according to FB) in the application which made it play silent audio in background. Incidentally this meant that the app was able to bypass the iOS restrictions on background processes.

Whether it really was a bug or intentional is a subject of debate though.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#45

Post by drcross »

therealmarv wrote: post #37
eddz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of alternatives to Whatsapp. I don't even have it installed on my phone.

It's not about the program. It's about the network... you cannot switch a network when all your friends and colleagues use WhatsApp and their groups. But I'm happy WhatsApp is more secure than most of the alternatives with good E2E encryption support.

> with good E2E encryption support.

They say there is good E2E encryption. Great claims require great proof.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#46

Post by jacobush »

dave2000 wrote: post #11
tuxracer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you RTFA you'd see the claim is that Facebook is activating the microphone to listen to non-electronic verbal communication you're having nearby your phone.

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter at all if there's any evidence that a given claim about a particular version of an app is being tapped; you have to assume that they all are, all the time, and act accordingly. You're never going to know, and certainly not ahead of time; best to assume they're all tapped. Which, as we all know post-Snowden, is the only reasonable assumption.

I think there is value in being vigilant as you say while at the same time disciplining corporations to out best abilities.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#47

Post by dontstealmyname »

capitalsigma wrote: post #31
tlrobinson wrote: post #3

“That is kind of weird,” she laughed. “I’m still not so sure this isn’t just coincidence. I don’t think Facebook is really listening to our conversations.” This is a terrible article. There's an easy way to figure out if it's a coincidence... repeat the experiment.

99% sure this is not a coincidence, here's my theory: people's IRL conversations can be pretty reliably predicted by their Facebook conversations, so targeted ads based on messages tend to be surprisingly relevant to the next thing they talk about IRL. Example: my girlfriend was given a box of Flonase by her parents and immediately got a Facebook ad for it. She had not mentioned Flonase anywhere on Facebook ever. Spo…

See this seems reasonable.. however I was once playing Battlefield Hardline raving about how awesome the camera's were for whatever I was doing and was then presented with security camera ads shortly after while browsing Facebook on my desktop. I have no interest or need for security cameras or even any reason to source information about them online. I double checked my web history and couldn't find anything related either, plus I had not had any conversations about cameras on Facebook. I remarked about how creepy it was over Team Speak and had 2 other people comment about similar experiences recently (at that time) as well. They claimed the only device they had near them was a phone at the time and the conversation was spontaneous.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#48

Post by ojosilva »

therealmarv wrote: post #37
eddz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of alternatives to Whatsapp. I don't even have it installed on my phone.

It's not about the program. It's about the network... you cannot switch a network when all your friends and colleagues use WhatsApp and their groups. But I'm happy WhatsApp is more secure than most of the alternatives with good E2E encryption support.

I wonder if good E2E encryption of the WhatsApp message rules out the app sending, in parallel, an indexed list of juicy keywords (encrypted or not) to FB servers for the purpose of targeting ads.

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#49

Post by jchendy »

yoz-y wrote: post #44
dawnerd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you mention that: http://bgr.com/2016/02/01/facebook-android-app-battery-life-... http://www.cnet.com/how-to/improve-iphone-battery-life-delet... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-iphone-battery-... Now is that because of voice? Very unlikely.

On iPhone the problem was that FB left a bug (according to FB) in the application which made it play silent audio in background. Incidentally this meant that the app was able to bypass the iOS restrictions on background processes. Whether it really was a bug or intentional is a subject of debate though.

Why would they intentionally play silent audio?

Re: Is Facebook eavesdropping on phone conversations?

#50

Post by bad_user »

drcross wrote: post #45
therealmarv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the program. It's about the network... you cannot switch a network when all your friends and colleagues use WhatsApp and their groups. But I'm happy WhatsApp is more secure than most of the alternatives with good E2E encryption support.

> with good E2E encryption support. They say there is good E2E encryption. Great claims require great proof.

Behind WhatsApp's E2E encryption is the technology from Signal / Open Whisper Systems, which is developed in the open, the work on WhatsApp being done in partnership with them, see: https://whispersystems.org

Of course, it's not totally trustworthy, because in the end it's still a proprietary app, distributed as a binary blob, connecting to proprietary servers, for which you can't have access to the source code and in spite of any well meaning partnerships, they can always push an update that undoes all of that.

But you know, at this point that's still better and more trustworthy than other mainstream alternatives. So now I have WhatsApp installed.

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